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Browning  and  Tennyson 


ENGLISH   MEN   OF   LETTERS 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


BY 
G.    K.   CHESTERTON 


NEW   YORK 
GROSSET    &    DUNLAP 

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COPYRIGHT,  1908, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  February,  1903.      Reprinted 
November,  1903;  April,  1904;  July,  1905;  May,  1906, 


NortoaoS 

J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
.Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


College 
Library 


KOBEET    BROWNING 

CHAPTER  I 

BROWNING    IN    EARLY    LIFE 

ON  the  subject  of  Browning's  work  innumerable  things 
have  been  said  and  remain  to  be  said ;  of  his  life,  con- 
sidered as  a  narrative  of  facts,  there  is  little  or  nothing 
to  say.  It  was  a  lucid  and  public  and  yet  quiet  life, 
which  culminated  in  one  great  dramatic  test  of  char- 
acter, and  then  fell  back  again  into  this  union  of 
quietude  and  publicity.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  it 
is  a  great  deal  more  difficult  to  speak  finally  about  his 
life  than  about  his  work.  His  work  has  the  mystery 
which  belongs  to  the  complex ;  his  life  the  much  greater 
mystery  which  belongs  to  the  simple.  He  was  clever 
enough  t^  understand  his  own  poetry ;  and  if  he 
understood  it,  we  can  understand  it.  But  he  was  also 
entirely  unconscious  and  impulsive,  and  he  was  never 
clever  enough  to  understand  his  own  character ;  con- 
sequently we  may  be  excused  if  that  part  of  him  which 
was  hidden  from  him  is  partly  hidden  from  us.  The 
subtle  man  is  always  immeasurably  easier  to  understand 
than  the  natural  man ;  for  the  subtle  man  keeps  a  diary 
of  his  moods,  he  practises  the  art  of  self-analysis  and 
self-revelation,  and  can  tell  us  how  he  came  to  feel  this 

B  1 


ID'e'b-lO 


JLu 


2  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

or  to  say  that.  But  a  man  like  Browning  knows 
no  more  about  the  state  of  his  emotions  than  about 
the  state  of  his  pulse  ;  they  are  things  greater  than  he, 
things  growing  at  will,  like  forces  of  Nature.  There 
is  an  old  anecdote,  probably  apocryphal,  which  describes 
how  a  feminine  admirer  wrote  to  Browning  asking  him 
for  the  meaning  of  one  of  his  darker  poems,  and 
received  the  following  reply :  "  When  that  poem  was 
written,  two  people  knew  what  it  meant  —  God  and 
Robert  Browning.  And  now  God  only  knows  what 
it  means."  This  story  gives,  in  all  probability,  an  en- 
tirely false  impression  of  Browning's  attitude  towards 
his  work.  He  was  a  keen  artist,  a  keen  scholar,  he 
could  put  his  finger  011  anything,  and  he  had  a  memory 
like  the  British  Museum  Library.  But  the  story  does, 
in  all  probability,  give  a  tolerably  accurate  picture  of 
Browning's  attitude  towards  his  own  emotions  and 
his  psychological  type.  If  a  man  had  asked  him  what 
some  particular  allusion  to  a  Persian  hero  meant  he 
could  in  all  probability  have  quoted  half  the  epic ;  if  a 
man  had  asked  him  which  third  cousin  of  Charlemagne 
was  alluded  to  in  Sordello,  he  could  have  given  an 
account  of  the  man  and  an  account  of  his  father  and 
his  grandfather.  But  if  a  man  had  asked  him  what 
he  thought  of  himself,  or  what  were  his  emotions  an 
hour  before  his  wedding,  he  would  have  replied  with 
perfect  sincerity  that  God  alone  knew. 

This  mystery  of  the  unconscious  man,  far  deeper 
than  any  mystery  of  the  conscious  one,  existing  as  it 
does  in  all  men,  existed  peculiarly  in  Browning,  because 
he  was  a  very  ordinary  and  spontaneous  man.  The 
same  thing  exists  to  some  extent  in  all  history  and  all 
affairs.  Anything  that  is  deliberate,  twisted,  created 


i.]  BROWNING  IN   EARLY   LIFE  3 

as  a  trap  and  a  mystery,  must  be  discovered  at  last ; 
everything  that  is  done  naturally  remains  mysterious. 
It  may  be  difficult  to  discover  the  principles  of  the 
Rosicrucians,  but  it  is  much  easier  to  discover  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Rosicrucians  than  the  principles  of  the 
United  States  :  nor  has  any  secret  society  kept  its  aims 
so  quiet  as  humanity.  The  way  to  be  inexplicable  is 
to  be  chaotic,  and  on  the  surface  this  was  the  quality  of 
Browning's  life ;  there  is  the  same  difference  between 
judging  of  his  poetry  and  judging  of  his  life,  that  there 
is  between  making  a  map  of  a  labyrinth  and  making 
a  map  of  a  mist.  The  discussion  of  what  some  par- 
ticular allusion  in  Sordello  means  has  gone  on  so  far, 
and  may  go  on  still,  but  it  has  it  in  its  nature  to  end. 
The  life  of  Robert  Browning,  who  combines  the  greatest 
brain  with  the  most  simple  temperament  known  in  our 
annals,  would  go  on  for  ever  if  we  did  not  decide  to 
summarise  it  in  a  very  brief  and  simple  narrative. 

Robert  Browning  was  born  in  Camberwell  on  May 
7th,  1812.  His  father  and  grandfather  had  been  clerks 
in  the  Bank  of  England,  and  his  whole  family  would 
appear  to  have  belonged  to  the  solid  and  educated 
middle  class  —  the  class  which  is  interested  in  letters, 
but  not  ambitious  in  them,  the  class  to  which  poetry 
is  a  luxury,  but  not  a  necessity. 

This  actual  quality  and  character  of  the  Browning 
family  shows  some  tendency  to  be  obscured  by  matters 
more  remote.  It  is  the  custom  of  all  biographers  to 
seek  for  the  earliest  traces  of  a  family  in  distant  ages 
and  even  in  distant  lands  ;  and  Browning,  as  it  happens, 
has  given  them  opportunities  which  tend  to  lead  away 
the  mind  from  the  main  matter  in  hand.  There  is  a 


4  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

tradition,  for  example,  that  men  of  his  name  were  prom- 
inent in  the  feudal  ages ;  it  is  based  upon  little  beyond 
a  coincidence  of  surnames  and  the  fact  that  Browning 
used  a  seal  with  a  coat-of-arms.  Thousands  of  middle- 
class  men  use  such  a  seal,  merely  because  it  is  a  curiosity 
or  a  legacy,  without  knowing  or  caring  anything  about 
the  condition  of  their  ancestors  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Then,  again,  there  is  a  theory  that  he  was  of  Jewish 
blood;  a  view  which  is  perfectly  conceivable,  and 
which  Browning  would  have  been  the  last  to  have 
thought  derogatory,  but  for  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  is  exceedingly  little  evidence.  The  chief  reason 
assigned  by  his  contemporaries  for  the  belief  was  the 
fact  that  he  was,  without  doubt,  specially  and  pro- 
foundly interested  in  Jewish  matters.  This  suggestion, 
worthless  in  any  case,  would,  if  anything,  tell  the  other 
way.  For  while  an  Englishman  may  be  enthusiastic 
about  England,  or  indignant  against  England,  it  never 
occurred  to  any  living  Englishman  to  be  interested  in 
England.  Browning  was,  like  every  other  intelligent 
Aryan,  interested  in  the  Jews ;  but  if  he  was  related 
to  every  people  in  which  he  was  interested,  he  must 
have  been  of  extraordinarily  mixed  extraction.  Thirdly, 
there  is  the  yet  more  sensational  theory  that  there  was 
in  Robert  Browning  a  strain  of  the  negro.  The  sup- 
porters of  this  hypothesis  seem  to  have  little  in  real- 
ity to  say,  except  that  Browning's  grandmother  was 
certainly  a  Creole.  It  is  said  in  support  of  the  view 
that  Browning  was  singularly  dark  in  early  life,  and 
was  often  mistaken  for  an  Italian.  There  does  not, 
however,  seem  to  be  anything  particular  to  be  deduced 
from  this,  except  that  if  he  looked  like  an  Italian,  he 
must  have  looked  exceedingly  unlike  a  negro. 


I.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  5 

There  is  nothing  valid  against  any  of  these  three 
theories,  just  as  there  is  nothing  valid  in  their  favour; 
they  may,  any  or  all  of  them,  be  true,  but  they  are 
still  irrelevant.  They  are  something  that  is  in  history 
or  biography  a  great  deal  worse  than  being  false  —  they 
are  misleading.  We  do  not  want  to  know  about  a  man 
like  Browning,  whether  he  had  a  right  to  a  shield  used 
in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  or  whether  the  tenth  grand- 
father of  his  Creole  grandmother  had  been  white  or 
black  :  we  want  to  know  something  about  his  family, 
which  is  quite  a  different  thing.  We  wish  to  have 
about  Browning  not  so  much  the  kind  of  information 
which  would  satisfy  Clarencieux  King-at-Arms,  but  the 
sort  of  information  which  would  satisfy  us,  if  we  were 
advertising  for  a  very  confidential  secretary,  or  a  very 
private  tutor.  We  should  not  be  concerned  as  to 
whether  the  tutor  were  descended  from  an  Irish  king, 
but  we  should  still  be  really  concerned  about  his  extrac- 
tion, about  what  manner  of  people  his  had  been  for  the 
last  two  or  three  generations.  This  is  the  most  practi- 
cal duty  of  biography,  and  this  is  also  the  most  difficult. 
It  is  a  great  deal  easier  to  hunt  a  family  from  tomb- 
stone to  tombstone  back  to  the  time  of  Henry  II.  than 
to  catch  and  realise  and  put  upon  paper  that  most 
nameless  and  elusive  of  all  things  —  social  tone. 

It  will  be  said  immediately,  and  must  as  promptly 
be  admitted,  that  we  could  find  a  biographical  signi- 
ficance in  any  of  these  theories  if  we  looked  for  it. 
But  it  is,  indeed,  the  sin  and  snare  of  biographers  that 
they  tend  to  see  significance  in  everything ;  characteris- 
tic carelessness  if  their  hero  drops  his  pipe,  and  charac- 
teristic carefulness  if  he  picks  it  up  again.  It  is  true, 
assuredly,  that  all  the  three  races  above  named  could  be 


6  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP 

connected  with  Browning's  personality.  If  we  believed, 
for  instance,  that  he  really  came  ui  a  race  of  mediaeval 
barons,  we  should  say  at  once  that  from  them  he  jot 
his  pre-eminent  spirit  of  battle  :  we  should  be  right,  for 
every  line  in  his  stubborn  soul  and  his  erect  body  did 
really  express  the  fighter ;  he  was  always  contending, 
whether  it  was  with  a  German  theory  about  the 
Gnostics,  or  with  a  stranger  who  elbowed  hi^  wife  in  a 
crowd.  Again,  if  we  had  decided  that  he  was  a  Jew, 
•we  should  point  out  how  absorbed  he  was  in  the 
terrible  simplicity  of  monotheism  :  we  should  be  right, 
for  he  was  so  absorbed.  Or  again,  in  the  case  even  of 
the  negro  fancy;  it  would  not  be  difficult  for  us  to 
suggest  a  love  of  colour,  a  certain  mental  gaudiness,  a 
pleasure 

"When  reds  and  blues  were  indeed  red  and  blue,1' 

as  he  says  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  We  should 
be  right ;  for  there  really  was  in  Browning  a  tropical 
violence  of  taste,  an  artistic  scheme  compounded  as  it 
were,  of  orchids  and  cockatoos,  which,  amid  our  cold 
English  poets,  seems  scarcely  European.  All  this  is 
extremely  fascinating;  and  it  may  be  true.  But,  as  has 
above  been  suggested,  here  comes  in  the  great  temp- 
tation of  this  kind  of  work,  the  noble  temptation  to 
see  too  much  in  everything.  The  biographer  can  easily 
see  a  personal  significance  in  these  three  hypothetical 
nationalities.  But  is  there  in  the  world  a  biographer 
who  could  lay  his  hand  upon  his  heart  and  say  that  he 
would  not  have  seen  as  much  significance  in  any  three 
other  nationalities  ?  If  Browning's  ancestors  had  been 
Frenchmen,  should  we  not  have  said  that  it  was  from 
them  doubtless  that  he  inherited  that  logical  agility 


which  marks  him  among  English  poets  ?  If  his  grand- 
father had  been  a  Swede,  should  we  not  have  said  that 
the  old  sea-roving  blood  broke  out  in  bold  speculation 
and  insatiable  travel  ?  If  his  great-aunt  had  been  a 
Red  Indian,  should  we  not  have  said  that  only  in  the 
Ojibways  and  the  Blackfeet  do  we  find  the  Browning 
fantasticality  combined  with  the  Browning  stoicism  ? 
This  over-readiness  to  seize  hints  is  an  inevitable  part 
of  that  secret  hero-worship  which  is  the  heart  of 
biography.  The  lover  of  great  men  sees  signs  of  them 
long  before  they  begin  to  appear  on  the  earth,  and, 
like  some  old  mythological  chronicler,  claims  as  their 
heralds  the  storms  and  the  falling  stars. 

A  certain  indulgence  must  therefore  be  extended  to 
the  present  writer  if  he  declines  to  follow  that  admi- 
rable veteran  of  Browning  study,  Dr.  Furnivall,  into  the 
prodigious  investigations  which  he  has  been  conducting 
into  the  condition  of  the  Browning  family  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world.  For  his  last  discovery,  the 
descent  of  Browning  from  a  footman  in  the  service  of  a 
country  magnate,  there  seems  to  be  suggestive,  though 
not  decisive,  evidence.  But  Browning's  descent  from 
barons,  or  Jews,  or  lackeys,  or  black  men,  is  not  the 
main  point  touching  his  family.  If  the  Brownings 
were  of  mixed  origin,  they  were  so  much  the  more  like 
the  great  majority  of  English  middle-class  people.  It 
is  curious  that  the  romance  of  race  should  be  spoken  of 
as  if  it  were  a  thing  peculiarly  aristocratic ;  that  admi- 
ration for  rank,  or  interest  in  family,  should  mean  only 
interest  in  one  not  very  interesting  type  of  rank  and 
family.  The  truth  is  that  aristocrats  exhibit  less  of  the 
romance  of  pedigree  than  any  other  people  in  the  world. 
For  since  it  is  their  principle  to  marry  only  within  their 


8  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

own  class  and  mode  of  life,  there  is  no  opportunity  in 
their  case  for  any  of  the  more  interesting  studies  in 
heredity  ;  they  exhibit  almost  the  unbroken  uniformity 
of  the  lower  animals.  It  is  in  the  middle  classes  that 
we  find  the  poetry  of  genealogy ;  it  is  the  suburban 
grocer  standing  at  his  shop  door  whom  some  wild  dash 
of  Eastern  or  Celtic  blood  may  drive  suddenly  to  a 
whole  holiday  or  a  crime.  Let  us  admit  then,  that  it  is 
true  that  these  legends  of  the  Browning  family  have 
every  abstract  possibility.  But  it  is  a  far  more  cogent 
and  apposite  truth  that  if  a  man  had  knocked  at  the 
door  of  every  house  in  the  street  where  Browning  was 
born,  he  would  have  found  similar  legends  in  all  of 
them.  There  is  hardly  a  family  in  Camberwell  that 
has  not  a  story  or  two  about  foreign  marriages  a  few 
generations  back ;  and  in  all  this  the  Brownings  are 
simply  a  typical  Camberwell  family.  The  real  truth 
about  Browning  and  men  like  him  can  scarcely  be 
better  expressed  than  in  the  words  of  that  very 
wise  and  witty  story,  Kingsley's  Water  Babies,  in  which 
the  pedigree  of  the  Professor  is  treated  in  a  manner 
which  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  wild  common 
sense  of  the  book.  "  His  mother  was  a  Dutch  woman, 
and  therefore  she  was  born  at  Curaqoa  (of  course,  you 
have  read  your  geography  and  therefore  know  why), 
and  his  father  was  a  Pole,  and  therefore  he  was  brought 
up  at  Petropaulowski  (of  course,  you  have  learnt  your 
modern  politics,  and  therefore  know  why),  but  for 
all  tliat  he  was  as  thorough  an  Englishman  as  ever 
coveted  his  neighbour's  goods." 

It  may  be  well  therefore  to  abandon  the  task  of 
obtaining  a  clear  account  of  Browning's  family,  and 
endeavour  to  obtain,  what  is  much  more  important,  a 


i.]  BROWNING  IN   EARLY   LITE  9 

clear  account  of  his  home.  For  the  great  central  and 
solid  fact,  which  these  heraldic  speculations  tend  in- 
evitably to  veil  and  confuse,  is  that  Browning  was  a 
thoroughly  typical  Englishman  of  the  middle  class. 
He  may  have  had  alien  blood,  and  that  alien  blood,  by 
the  paradox  we  have  observed,  may  have  made  him 
more  characteristically  a  native.  A  phase,  a  fancy,  a 
metaphor  may  or  may  not  have  been  born  of  eastern 
or  southern  elements,  but  he  was,  without  any  question 
at  all,  an  Englishman  of  the  middle  class.  Neither  all 
his  liberality  nor  all  his  learning  ever  made  him  any- 
thing but  an  Englishman  of  the  middle  class.  •  He 
expanded  his  intellectual  tolerance  until  it  included 
the  anarchism  of  Fiftne  at  the  Fair  and  the  blasphe- 
mous theology  of  Caliban;  but  he  remained  himself 
an  Englishman  of  the  middle  class.  He  pictured  all 
the  passions  of  the  earth  since  the  Fall,  from  the  de- 
vouring amorousness  of  Time's  Revenges  to  the  des- 
potic fantasy  of  Instans  Tyrannus  ;  but  he  remained 
himself  an  Englishman  of  the  middle  class.  The  mo- 
ment that  he  came  in  contact  with  anything  that  was 
slovenly,  anything  that  was  lawless,  in  actual  life, 
something  rose  up  in  him,  older  than  any  opinions,  the 
blood  of  generations  of  good  men.  He  met  George 
Sand  and  her  poetical  circle  and  hated  it,  with  all  the 
hatred  of  an  old  city  merchant  for  the  irresponsible 
life.  He  met  the  Spiritualists  and  hated  them,  with 
all  the  hatred  of  the  middle  class  for  borderlands  and 
equivocal  positions  and  playing  with  fire.  His  intellect 
went  upon  bewildering  voyages,  but  his  soul  walked 
in  a  straight  road.  He  piled  up  the  fantastic  towers 
of  his  imagination  until  they  eclipsed  the  planets ;  but 
the  plan  of  the  foundation  on  which  he  built  was 


10  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

always  the  plan  of  an  honest  English  house  in  Camber- 
well.  He  abandoned,  with  a  ceaseless  intellectual  am- 
bition, every  one  of  the  convictions  of  his  class ;  but 
he  carried  its  prejudices  into  eternity. 

It  is  then  of  Browning  as  a  member  of  the  middle 
class,  that  we  can  speak  with  the  greatest  historical 
certainty;  and  it  is  his  immediate  forebears  who  present 
the  real  interest  to  us.  His  father,  Robert  Browning, 
was  a  man  of  great  delicacy  of  taste,  and  to  all  appear- 
ance of  an  almost  exaggerated  delicacy  of  conscience. 
Every  glimpse  we  have  of  him  suggests  that  earnest 
and  almost  worried  kindliness  which  is  the  mark  of 
those  to  whom  selfishness,  even  justifiable  selfishness, 
is  really  a  thing  difficult  or  impossible.  In  early  life 
Robert  Browning  senior  was  placed  by  his  father  (who 
was  apparently  a  father  of  a  somewhat  primitive,  not  to 
say  barbaric,  type)  in  an  important  commercial  position 
in  the  West  Indies.  He  threw  up  the  position  however, 
because  it  involved  him  in  some  recognition  of  slavery. 
Whereupon  his  unique  parent,  in  a  transport  of  rage, 
not  only  disinherited  him  and  flung  him  out  of  doors, 
but  by  a  superb  stroke  of  humour,  which  stands  alone 
in  the  records  of  parental  ingenuity,  sent  him  in  a  bill 
for  the  cost  of  his  education.  About  the  same  time 
that  he  was  suffering  for  his  moral  sensibility  he  was 
also  disturbed  about  religious  matters,  and  he  completed 
his  severance  from  his  father  by  joining  a  dissenting 
sect.  He  was,  in  short,  a  very  typical  example  of  the 
serious  middle-class  man  of  the  Wilberforce  period,  a 
man  to  whom  duty  was  all  in  all,  and  who  would  revo- 
lutionise an  empire  or  a  continent  for  the  satisfaction 
of  a  single  moral  scruple.  Thus,  while  he  was  Puritan 
at  the  core,  not  the  ruthless  Puritan  of  the  seventeenth. 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY  LIFE  11 

but  the  humanitarian  Puritan  of  the  eighteenth,  cen- 
tury, he  had  upon  the  surface  all  the  tastes  and  graces 
of  a  man  of  culture.  Numerous  accomplishments  of 
the  lighter  kind,  such  as  drawing  and  painting  in  water 
colours,  he  possessed ;  and  his  feeling  for  many  kinds 
of  literature  was  fastidious  and  exact.  But  the  whole 
was  absolutely  redolent  of  the  polite  severity  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  He  lamented  his  son's  early  ad- 
miration for  Byron,  and  never  ceased  adjuring  him  to 
model  himself  upon  Pope. 

He  was,  in  short,  one  of  the  old-fashioned  humani- 
tarians of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  class  which  we 
may  or  may  not  have  conquered  in  moral  theory,  but 
which  we  most  certainly  have  not  conquered  in  moral 
practice.  Eobert  Browning  senior  destroyed  all  his 
fortunes  in  order  to  protest  against  black  slavery; 
white  slavery  may  be,  as  later  economists  tell  us,  a 
thing  infinitely  worse,  but  not  many  men  destroy 
their  fortunes  in  order  to  protest  against  it.  The 
ideals  of  the  men  of  that  period  appear  to  us  very  un- 
attractive; to  them  duty  was  a  kind  of  chilly  sentiment. 
But  when  we  think  what  they  did  with  those  cold  ideals, 
we  can  scarcely  feel  so  superior.  They  uprooted  the 
enormous  Upas  of  slavery,  the  tree  that  was  literally  as 
old  as  the  race  of  man.  They  altered  the  whole  face  of 
Europe  with  their  deductive  fancies.  We  have  ideals 
that  are  really  better,  ideals  of  passion,  of  mysticism, 
of  a  sense  of  the  youth  and  adventurousness  of  the 
earth ;  but  it  will  be  well  for  us  if  we  achieve  as 
much  by  our  frenzy  as  they  did  by  their  delicacies.  It 
scarcely  seems  as  if  we  were  as  robust  in  our  very 
robustness  as  they  were  robust  in  their  sensibility. 

Robert   Browning's    mother   was   the   daughter   of 


12  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

William  Wiedermann,  a  German  merchant  settled  in 
Dundee,  and  married  to  a  Scotch,  wife.  One  of  the 
poet's  principal  biographers  has  suggested  that  from 
this  union  of  the  German  and  Scotch,  Browning  got 
his  metaphysical  tendency ;  it  is  possible ;  but  here 
again  we  must  beware  of  the  great  biographical  danger 
of  making  mountains  out  of  molehills.  What  Brown- 
ing's mother  unquestionably  did  give  to  him,  was  in 
the  way  of  training  —  a  very  strong  religious  habit,  and 
a  great  belief  in  manners.  Thomas  Carlyle  called  her 
"  the  type  of  a  Scottish  gentlewoman,"  and  the  phrase 
has  a  very  real  significance  to  those  who  realise  the 
peculiar  condition  of  Scotland,  one  of  the  very  few 
European  countries  where  large  sections  of  the  aris- 
tocracy are  Puritans;  thus  a  Scottish  gentlewoman 
combines  two  descriptions  of  dignity  at  the  same 
time.  Little  more  is  known  of  this  lady  except  the 
fact  that  after  her  death  Browning  could  not  bear  to 
look  at  places  where  she  had  walked. 

Browning's  education  in  the  formal  sense  reduces 
itself  to  a  minimum.  In  very  early  boyhood  he  at- 
tended a  species  of  dame-school,  which,  according  to 
some  of  his  biographers,  he  had  apparently  to  leave 
because  he  was  too  clever  to  be  tolerable.  However 
this  may  be,  he  undoubtedly  went  afterwards  to  a 
school  kept  by  Mr.  Ready,  at  which  again  he  was 
marked  chiefly  by  precocity.  But  the  boy's  education 
did  not  in  truth  take  place  at  any  systematic  seat  of 
education ;  it  took  place  in  his  own  home,  where  one  of 
the  quaintest  and  most  learned  and  most  absurdly  indul- 
gent of  fathers  poured  out  in  an  endless  stream  fantastic 
recitals  from  the  Greek  epics  and  mediaeval  chronicles. 
If  we  test  the  matter  by  the  test  of  actual  schools  and 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  13 

universities,  Browning  will  appear  to  be  almost  the 
least  educated  raan  in  English  literary  history.  But 
if  we  test  it  by  the  amount  actually  learned,  we  shall 
think  that  he  was  perhaps  the  most  educated  man  that 
ever  lived ;  that  he  was  in  fact,  if  anything,  over-edu- 
cated. In  a  spirited  poem  he  has  himself  described 
how,  when  he  was  a  small  child,  his  father  used  to 
pile  up  chairs  in  the  drawing-room  and  call  them  the 
city  of  Troy.  Browning  came  out  of  the  home  crammed 
with  all  kinds  of  knowledge  —  knowledge  about  the 
Greek  poets,  knowledge  about  the  Provenqal  Trouba- 
dours, knowledge  about  the  Jewish  Eabbis  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  But  along  with  all  this  knowledge  he 
carried  one  definite  and  important  piece  of  ignorance, 
an  ignorance  of  the  degree  to  which  such  knowledge 
was  exceptional.  He  was  no  spoilt  and  self-conscious 
child,  taught  to  regard  himself  as  clever.  In  the 
atmosphere  in  which  he  lived  learning  was  a  pleasure, 
and  a  natural  pleasure,  like  sport  or  wine.  He  had 
in  it  the  pleasure  of  some  old  scholar  of  the  Renascence, 
when  grammar  itself  was  as  fresh  as  the  flowers  of 
spring.  He  had  no  reason  to  suppose  that  every  one 
did  not  join  in  so  admirable  a  game.  His  sagacious 
destiny,  while  giving  him  knowledge  of  everything  else, 
left  him  in  ignorance  of  the  ignorance  of  the  world. 

Of  his  boyish  days  scarcely  any  important  trace  re- 
mains, except  a  kind  of  diary  which  contains  under 
one  date  the  laconic  statement,  "  Married  two  wives 
this  morning."  The  insane  ingenuity  of  the  biographer 
would  be  quite  capable  of  seeing  in  this  a  most  sugges- 
tive foreshadowing  of  the  sexual  dualism  which  is  so 
ably  defended  in  Fifine  at  the  Fair.  A  great  part  of 
his  childhood  was  passed  in  the  society  of  his  only 


14  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

sister  Sariana;  and  it  is  a  curious  and  touching  fact 
that  with  her  also  he  passed  his  last  days.  From  his 
earliest  babyhood  he  seems  to  have  lived  in  a  more  or 
less  stimulating  mental  atmosphere ;  but  as  he  emerged 
into  youth  he  came  under  great  poetic  influences,  which 
made  his  father's  classical  poetic  tradition  look  for  the 
time  insipid :  Browning  began  to  live  in  the  life  of  his 
own  age. 

As  a  young  man  he  attended  classes  at  University 
College ;  beyond  this  there  is  little  evidence  that  he  was 
much  in  touch  with  intellectual  circles  outside  that  of 
his  own  family.  But  the  forces  that  were  moving  the 
literary  world  had  long  passed  beyond  the  merely  liter- 
ary area.  About  the  time  of  Browning's  boyhood  a  very 
subtle  and  profound  change  was  beginning  in  the  intel- 
lectual atmosphere  of  such  homes  as  that  of  the  Brown- 
ings. In  studying  the  careers  of  great  men  we  tend 
constantly  to  forget  that  their  youth  was  generally 
passed  and  their  characters  practically  formed  in  a 
period  long  previous  to  their  appearance  in  history. 
We  think  of  Milton,  the  Restoration  Puritan,  and  for- 
get that  he  grew  up  in  the  living  shadow  of  Shake- 
speare and  the  full  summer  of  the  Elizabethan  drama. 
We  realise  Garibaldi  as  a  sudden  and  almost  miracu- 
lous figure  rising  about  fifty  years  ago  to  create  the 
new  Kingdom  of  Italy,  and  we  forget  that  he  must 
have  formed  his  first  ideas  of  liberty  while  hearing  at 
his  father's  dinner-table  that  Napoleon  was  the  master 
of  Europe.  Similarly,  we  think  of  Browning  as  the 
great  Victorian  poet,  who  lived  long  enough  to  have 
opinions  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  Home  Rule  Bill,  and  for- 
get that  as  a  young  man  he  passed  a  bookstall  and  saw 
a  volume  ticketed  "Mr.  Shelley's  Atheistic  Poem,"  and 


j.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  15 

had  to  search  even  in  his  own  really  cultivated  circle 
for  some  one  who  could  tell  him  who  Mr.  Shelley  was. 
Browning  was,  in  short,  born  in  the  afterglow  of  the 
great  Revolution. 

The  French  Revolution  was  at  root  a  thoroughly 
optimistic  thing.  It  may  seem  strange  to  attribute 
optimism  to  anything  so  destructive;  but,  in  truth, 
this  particular  kind  of  optimism  is  inevitably,  and  by 
its  nature,  destructive.  The  great  dominant  idea  of 
the  whole  of  that  period,  the  period  before,  during,  and 
long  after  the  Revolution,  is  the  idea  that  man  would 
by  his  nature  live  in  an  Eden  of  dignity,  liberty,  and 
love,  and  that  artificial  and  decrepit  systems  are  keep- 
ing him  out  of  that  Eden.  No  one  can  do  the  least 
justice  to  the  great  Jacobins  who  does  not  realise 
that  to  them  breaking  the  civilisation  of  ages  was  like 
breaking  the  cords  of  a  treasure-chest.  And  just  as 
for  more  than  a  century  great  men  had  dreamed  of 
this  beautiful  emancipation,  so  the  dream  began  in 
the  time  of  Keats  and  Shelley  to  creep  down  among 
the  dullest  professions  and  the  most  prosaic  classes  of 
society.  A  spirit  of  revolt  was  growing  among  the 
young  of  the  middle  classes,  which  had  nothing  at  all 
in  common  with  the  complete  and  pessimistic  revolt 
against  all  things  in  heaven  or  earth,  which  has  been 
fashionable  among  the  young  in  more  recent  times. 
The  Shelleyan  enthusiast  was  altogether  on  the  side 
of  existence;  he  thought  that  every  cloud  and  chimp 
of  grass  shared  his  strict  republican  orthodoxy.  He 
represented,  in  short,  a  revolt  of  the  normal  against 
the  abnormal ;  he  found  himself,  so  to  speak,  in  the 
heart  of  a  wholly  topsy-turvy  and  blasphemous  state 
of  things,  in  which  God  was  rebelling  against  Satan. 


16  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

There  began  to  arise  about  this  time  a  race  of  young 
men  like  Keats,  members  of  a  not  highly  cultivated 
middle  class,  and  even  of  classes  lower,  who  felt  in 
a  hundred  ways  this  obscure  alliance  with  eternal 
things  against  temporal  and  practical  ones,  and  who 
lived  on  its  imaginative  delight.  They  were  a  kind 
of  furtive  universalist ;  they  had  discovered  the  whole 
cosmos,  and  they  kept  the  whole  cosmos  a  secret. 
They  climbed  up  dark  stairs  to  meagre  garrets,  and 
shut  themselves  in  with  the  gods.  Numbers  of  the 
great  men,  who  afterwards  illuminated  the  Victorian 
era,  were  at  this  time  living  in  mean  streets  in  mag- 
nificent daydreams.  Kuskin  was  solemnly  visiting  his 
solemn  suburban  aunts ;  Dickens  was  going  to  and  fro 
in  a  blacking  factory;  Carlyle,  slightly  older,  was  still 
lingering  on  a  poor  farm  in  Dumfriesshire;  Keats  had 
not  long  become  the  assistant  of  the  country  surgeon 
when  Browning  was  a  boy  in  Camberwell.  On  all 
sides  there  was  the  first  beginning  of  the  aesthetic  stir 
in  the  middle  classes  which  expressed  itself  in  the  com- 
bination of  so  many  poetic  lives  with  so  many  prosaic 
livelihoods.  It  was  the  age  of  inspired  office-boys. 

Browning  grew  up,  then,  with  the  growing  fame  of 
Shelley  and  Keats,  in  the  atmosphere  of  literary  youth, 
fierce  and  beatitiful,  among  new  poets  who  believed 
in  a  new  world.  It  is  important  to  remember  this, 
because  the  real  Browning  was  a  quite  different  person 
from  the  grim  moralist  and  metaphysician  who  is  seen 
through  the  spectacles  of  Browning  Societies  and 
University  Extension  Lecturers.  Browning  was  first 
and  foremost  a  poet,  a  man  made  to  enjoy  all  things 
visible  and  invisible,  a  priest  of  the  higher  passions. 
The  misunderstanding  that  has  supposed  him  to  be 


i.]  BROWNING  IN  EARLY  LIFE  17 

other  than  poetical,  because  his  form  was  often  fanci- 
ful and  abrupt,  is  really  different  from  the  misunder- 
standing which  attaches  to  most  other  poets.  The 
opponents  of  Victor  Hugo  called  him  a  mere  windbag; 
the  opponents  of  Shakespeare  called  him  a  buffoon. 
But  the  admirers  of  Hugo  and  Shakespeare  at  least 
knew  better.  Now  the  admirers  and  opponents  of 
Browning  alike  make  him  out  to  be  a  pedant  rather 
than  a  poet.  The  only  difference  between  the  Brown- 
ingite  and  the  anti-Browningite,  is  that  the  second  says 
he  was  not  a  poet  but  a  mere  philosopher,  and  the  first 
says  he  was  a  philosopher  and  not  a  mere  poet.  The 
admirer  disparages  poetry  in  order  to  exalt  Browning ; 
the  opponent  exalts  poetry  in  order  to  disparage  Brown- 
ing ;  and  all  the  time  Browning  himself  exalted  poetry 
above  all  earthly  things,  served  it  with  single-hearted 
intensity,  and  stands  among  the  few  poets  who  hardly 
wrote  a  line  of  anything  else. 

The  whole  of  the  boyhood  and  youth  of  Kobert 
Browning  has  as  much  the  quality  of  pure  poetry  as 
the  boyhood  and  youth  of  Shelley.  We  do  not  find  in 
it  any  trace  of  the  analytical  Browning  who  is  believed 
in  by  learned  ladies  and  gentlemen.  How  indeed 
would  such  sympathisers  feel  if  informed  that  the 
first  poems  that  Browning  wrote  in  a  volume  called 
Incondita  were  noticed  to  contain  the  fault  of  "too 
much  splendour  of  language  and  too  little  wealth  of 
thought "  ?  They  were  indeed  Byronic  in  the  extreme, 
and  Browning  in  his  earlier  appearances  in  society  pre- 
sents himself  in  quite  a  romantic  manner.  Macready, 
the  actor,  wrote  of  him:  "He  looks  and  speaks  more 
like  a  young  poet  than  any  one  I  have  ever  seen."  A 
picturesque  tradition  remains  that  Thomas  Carlyle, 
c 


18  EGBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

riding  out  upon  one  of  his  solitary  gallops  necessitated 
by  his  physical  sufferings,  was  stopped  by  one  whom 
he  described  as  a  strangely  beautiful  youth,  who  poured 
out  to  him  without  preface  or  apology  his  admiration 
for  the  great  philosopher's  works.  Browning  at  this 
time  seems  to  have  left  upon  many  people  this  im- 
pression of  physical  charm.  A  friend  who  attended 
University  College  with  him  says :  "  He  was  then  a 
bright  handsome  youth  with  long  black  hair  falling 
over  his  shoulders."  Every  tale  that  remains  of  him 
in  connection  with  this  period  asserts  and  reasserts  the 
completely  romantic  spirit  by  which  he  was  then 
possessed.  He  was  fond,  for  example,  of  following  in 
the  track  of  gipsy  caravans,  far  across  country,  and  a 
song  which  he  heard  with  the  refrain,  "  Following  the 
Queen  of  the  Gipsies  oh  ! "  rang  in  his  ears  long  enough 
to  express  itself  in  his  soberer  and  later  days  in  that 
splendid  poem  of  the  spirit  of  escape  and  Bohemian- 
ism,  TJie  Flight  of  the  Duchess.  Such  other  of  these 
early  glimpses  of  him  as  remain,  depict  him  as  strid- 
ing across  Wimbledon  Common  with  his  hair  blowing 
in  the  wind,  reciting  aloud  passages  from  Isaiah,  or 
climbing  up  into  the  elms  above  Norwood  to  look 
over  London  by  night.  It  was  when  looking  down 
from  that  suburban  eyrie  over  the  whole  confounding 
labyrinth  of  London  that  he  was  filled  with  that  great 
irresponsible  benevolence  which  is  the  best  of  the  joys 
of  youth,  and  conceived  the  idea  of  a  perfectly  irre- 
sponsible benevolence  in  the  first  plan  of  Pippa  Passes. 
At  the  end  of  his  father's  garden  was  a  laburnum 
"heavy  with  its  weight  of  gold,"  and  in  the  tree  two 
nightingales  were  in  the  habit  of  singing  against  each 
other,  a  form  of  competition  which,  I  imagine,  has  since 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  19 

become  less  common  in  Camberwell.  When  Browning 
as  a  boy  was  intoxicated  with  the  poetry  of  Shelley 
and  Keats,  he  hypnotised  himself  into  something 
approaching  to  a  positive  conviction  that  these  two 
birds  were  the  spirits  of  the  two  great  poets  who  had 
settled  in  a  Camberwell  garden,  in  order  to  sing  to  the 
only  young  gentleman  who  really  adored  and  under- 
stood them.  This  last  story  is  perhaps  the  most  typical 
of  the  tone  common  to  all  the  rest ;  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  a  story  which  across  the  gulf  of  nearly 
eighty  years  awakens  so  vividly  a  sense  of  the  sump- 
tuous folly  of  an  intellectual  boyhood.  With  Brown- 
ing, as  with  all  true  poets,  passion  came  first  and  made 
intellectual  expression,  the  hunger  for  beauty  making 
literature  as  the  hunger  for  bread  made  a  plough.  The 
life  he  lived  in  those  early  days  was  no  life  of  dull 
application;  there  was  no  poet  whose  youth  was  so 
young.  WThen  he  was  full  of  years  and  fame,  and 
delineating  in  great  epics  the  beauty  and  horror  of  the 
romance  of  southern  Europe,  a  young  man,  thinking 
to  please  him,  said,  "  There  is  no  romance  now  except 
in  Italy."  "Well,"  said  Browning,  "I  should  make 
an  exception  of  Camberwell." 

Such  glimpses  will  serve  to  indicate  the  kind  of 
essential  issue  that  there  was  in  the  nature  of  things 
between  the  generation  of  Browning  and  the  genera- 
tion of  his  father.  Browning  was  bound  in  the  nature 
of  things  to  become  at  the  outset  Byronic,  and  Byronism 
was  not,  of  course,  in  reality  so  much  a  pessimism  about 
civilised  things  as  an  optimism  about  savage  things. 
This  great  revolt  on  behalf  of  the  elemental  which 
Keats  and  Shelley  represented  was  bound  first  of  all  to 
occur.  Eobert  Browning  junior  had  to  be  a  part  of  it, 


20  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

and  Robert  Browning  senior  had  to  go  back  to  his 
water  colours  and  the  faultless  couplets  of  Pope  with 
the  full  sense  of  the  greatest  pathos  that  the  world 
contains,  the  pathos  of  the  man  who  has  produced 
something  that  he  cannot  understand. 

The  earliest  works  of  Browning  bear  witness,  without 
exception,  to  this  ardent  and  somewhat  sentimental 
evolution.  Pauline  appeared  anonymously  in  1833. 
It  exhibits  the  characteristic  mark  of  a  juvenile  poem, 
the  general  suggestion  that  the  author  is  a  thousand 
years  old.  Browning  calls  it  a  fragment  of  a  confes- 
sion ;  and  Mr.  Johnson  Fox,  an  old  friend  of  Browning's 
father,  who  reviewed  it  for  Tait's  Magazine,  said,  with 
truth,  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  anything  more 
purely  confessional.  It  is  the  typical  confession  of  a 
boy  laying  bare  all  the  spiritual  crimes  of  infidelity 
and  moral  waste,  in  a  state  of  genuine  ignorance  of  the 
fact  that  every  one  else  has  committed  them.  It  is 
wholesome  and  natural  for  youth  to  go  about  confessing 
that  the  grass  is  green,  and  whispering  to  a  priest 
hoarsely  that  it  has  found  a  sun  in  heaven.  But  the 
records  of  that  particular  period  of  development,  even 
when  they  are  as  ornate  and  beautiful  as  Pauline,  are 
not  necessarily  or  invariably  wholesome  reading.  The 
chief  interest  of  Pauline,  with  all  its  beauties,  lies  in 
a  certain  almost  humorous  singularity,  the  fact  that 
Browning,  of  all  people,  should  have  signalised  his 
entrance  into  the  world  of  letters  with  a  poem  which 
may  fairly  be  called  morbid.  But  this  is  a  morbidity 
so  general  and  recurrent  that  it  may  be  called  in  a 
contradictory  phrase  a  healthy  morbidity  ;  it  is  a  kind 
of  intellectual  measles.  No  one  of  any  degree  of 
maturity  in  reading  Pauline  will  be  quite  so  horrified 


i.j  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  21 

at  the  sins  of  the  young  gentleman  who  tells  the  story 
as  he  seems  to  be  himself.  It  is  the  utterance  of  that 
bitter  and  heartrending  period  of  youth  which  comes 
before  we  realise  the  one  grand  and  logical  basis  of 
all  optimism  —  the  doctrine  of  original  sin.  The  boy 
at  this  stage  being  an  ignorant  and  inhuman  idealist, 
regards  all  his  faults  as  frightful  secret  malformations, 
and  it  is  only  later  that  he  becomes  conscious  of  that 
large  and  beautiful  and  benignant  explanation  that  the 
heart  of  man  is  deceitful  above  all  things  and  desperately 
wicked.  That  Browning,  whose  judgment  on  his  own 
work  was  one  of  the  best  in  the  world,  took  this  view 
of  Pauline  in  after  years  is  quite  obvious.  He  displayed 
a  very  manly  and  unique  capacity  of  really  laughing  at 
his  own  work  without  being  in  the  least  ashamed  of  it. 
"This,"  he  said  of  Pauline,  "is  the  only  crab  apple 
that  remains  of  the  shapely  tree  of  life  in  my  fool's 
paradise."  It  would  be  difficult  to  express  the  matter 
more  perfectly.  Although  Pauline  was  published 
anonymously,  its  authorship  was  known  to  a  certain 
circle,  and  Browning  began  to  form  friendships  in  the 
literary  world.  He  had  already  become  acquainted  with 
two  of  the  best  friends  he  was  ever  destined  to  have, 
Alfred  Domett,  celebrated  in  "  The  Guardian  Angel " 
and  "Waring," and  his  cousin  Silverthorne,  whose  death 
is  spoken  of  in  one  of  the  most  perfect  lyrics  in  the 
English  language, Browning's  "May  and  Death."  These 
were  men  of  his  own  age,  and  his  manner  of  speaking 
of  them  gives  us  many  glimpses  into  that  splendid 
world  of  comradeship  which  Plato  and  Walt  Whitman 
knew,  with  its  endless  days  and  its  immortal  nights. 
Browning  had  a  third  friend  destined  to  play  an  even 
greater  part  in  his  life,  but  who  belonged  to  an  older 


22  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

generation  and  a  statelier  school  of  manners  and 
scholarship.  Mr.  Kenyon  was  a  schoolfellow  of 
Browning's  father,  and  occupied  towards  his  son  some- 
thing of  the  position  of  an  irresponsible  uncle.  He 
was  a  rotund,  rosy  old  gentleman,  fond  of  comfort  and 
the  courtesies  of  life,  but  fond  of  them  more  for  others, 
though  much  for  himself.  Elizabeth  Barrett  in  after 
years  wrote  of  "the  brightness  of  his  carved  speech," 
which  would  appear  to  suggest  that  he  practised  that 
urbane  and  precise  order  of  wit  which  was  even  then 
old-fashioned.  Yet,  notwithstanding  many  talents  of 
this  kind,  he  was  not  so  much  an  able  man  as  the 
natural  friend  and  equal  of  able  men. 

Browning's  circle  of  friends,  however,  widened  about 
this  time  in  all  directions.  One  friend  in  particular  he 
made,  the  Comte  de  Kipert-Monclar,  a  French  Koyalist 
with  whom  he  prosecuted  with  renewed  energy  his 
studies  in  the  mediaeval  and  Renaissance  schools  of 
philosophy.  It  was  the  Count  who  suggested  that 
Browning  should  write  a  poetical  play  on  the  subject 
of  Paracelsus.  After  reflection,  indeed,  the  Count  re- 
tracted this  advice  on  the  ground  that  the  history  of 
the  great  mystic  gave  no  room  for  love.  Undismayed 
by  this  terrible  deficiency,  Browning  cai;ght  up  the 
idea  with  characteristic  enthusiasm,  and  in  1835  ap- 
peared the  first  of  his  works  which  he  himself  regarded 
as  representative — Paracelsus.  The  poem  shows  an 
enormous  advance  in  technical  literary  power ;  but  in 
the  history  of  Browning's  mind  it  is  chiefly  interesting 
as  giving  an  example  of  a  peculiarity  which  clung  to 
him  during  the  whole  of  his  literary  life,  an  intense 
love  of  the  holes  and  corners  of  history.  Fifty-two 
years  afterwards  he  wrote  Parleyings  with  certain  Per- 


i.]  BROWNING   IN  EARLY   LIFE  23 

sons  of  Importance  in  their  Day,  the  last  poem  published 
in  his  lifetime ;  and  any  reader  of  that  remarkable 
work  will  perceive  that  the  common  characteristic  of  all 
these  persons  is  not  so  much  that  they  were  of  impor- 
tance in  their  day  as  that  they  are  of  no  importance  in 
ours.  The  same  eccentric  fastidiousness  worked  in  him 
as  a  young  man  when  he  wrote  Paracelsus  and  Sordello. 
Nowhere  in  Browning's  poetry  can  we  find  any  very 
exhaustive  study  of  any  of  the  great  men  who  are  the 
favourites  of  the  poet  and  moralist.  He  has  written 
about  philosophy  and  ambition  and  music  and  morals, 
but  he  has  written  nothing  about  Socrates  or  Caesar  or 
Napoleon,  or  Beethoven  or  Mozart,  or  Buddha  or 
Mahomet.  When  he  wishes  to  describe  a  political 
ambition  he  selects  that  entirely  unknown  individual, 
King  Victor  of  Sardinia.  When  he  wishes  to  express 
the  most  perfect  soul  of  music,  he  unearths  some 
extraordinary  persons  called  Abt  Vogler  and  Master 
Hugues  of  Saxe-Gotha.  When  he  wishes  to  express 
the  largest  and  sublimest  scheme  of  morals  and  religion 
which  his  imagination  can  conceive,  he  does  not  put  it 
into  the  mouth  of  any  of  the  great  spiritual  leaders  of 
mankind,  but  into  the  mouth  of  an  obscure  Jewish  Rabbi 
of  the  name  of  Ben  Ezra.  It  is  fully  in  accordance 
with  this  fascinating  craze  of  his  that  when  he  wishes 
to  study  the  deification  of  the  intellect  and  the  dis- 
interested pursuit  of  the  things  of  the  mind,  he  does 
not  select  any  of  the  great  philosophers  from  Plato  to 
Darwin,  whose  investigations  are  still  of  some  impor- 
tance in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  He  selects  the  figure 
of  all  figures  most  covered  with  modern  satire  and 
pity,  a  priori  the  scientist  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
Renaissance.  His  supreme  type  of  the  human  intellect 


24  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

is  neither  the  academic  nor  the  positivist,  but  the 
alchemist.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  turn  of  mind 
constituting  a  more  complete  challenge  to  the  ordi- 
nary modern  point  of  view.  To  the  intellect  of  our 
time  the  wild  investigators  of  the  school  of  Paracel- 
sus seem  to  be  the  very  crown  and  flower  of  futil- 
ity, they  are  collectors  of  straws  and  careful  misers 
of  dust.  But  for  all  that  Browning  was  right.  Any 
critic  who  understands  the  true  spirit  of  mediaeval 
science  can  see  that  he  was  right;  no  critic  can  see 
how  right  he  was  unless  he  understands  the  spirit  of 
mediaeval  science  as  thoroughly  as  he  did.  In  the 
character  of  Paracelsus,  Browning  wished  to  paint  the 
dangers  and  disappointments  which  attend  the  man 
who  believes  merely  in  the  intellect.  He  wished  to 
depict  the  fall  of  the  logician ;  and  with  a  perfect  and 
unerring  instinct  he  selected  a  man  who  wrote  and 
spoke  in  the  tradition  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  most 
thoroughly  and  even  painfully  logical  period  that  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  If  he  had  chosen  an  ancient 
Greek  philosopher,  it  would  have  been  open  to  the 
critic  to  have  said  that  that  philosopher  relied  to 
some  extent  upon  the  most  sunny  and  graceful  social 
life  that  ever  flourished.  If  he  had  made  him  a  mod- 
ern sociological  professor,  it  would  have  been  possible 
to  object  that  his  energies  were  not  wholly  concerned 
with  truth,  but  partly  with  the  solid  and  material 
satisfaction  of  society.  But  the  man  truly  devoted 
to  the  things  of  the  mind  was  the  mediaeval  magi- 
cian. It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  one  civilisation 
does  not  satisfy  itself  by  calling  another  civilisation 
wicked — it  calls  it  uncivilised.  We  call  the  Chinese 
barbarians,  and  they  call  us  barbarians.  The  mediaeval 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  25 

state,  like  China,  was  a  foreign  civilisation,  and  this 
was  its  supreme  characteristic,  that  it  cared  for  the 
things  of  the  mind  for  their  own  sake.  To  complain 
of  the  researches  of  its  sages  on  the  ground  that  they 
were  not  materially  fruitful,  is  to  act  as  we  should 
act  in  telling  a  gardener  that  his  roses  were  not  as 
digestible  as  our  cabbages.  It  is  not  only  true  that 
the  mediaeval  philosophers  never  discovered  the  steam- 
engine  ;  it  is  quite  equally  true  that  they  never  tried. 
The  Eden  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  really  a  garden, 
where  each  of  God's  flowers — truth  and  beauty  and  rea- 
son— flourished  for  its  own  sake,  and  with  its  own  name. 
The  Eden  of  modern  progress  is  a  kitchen  garden. 

It  would  have  been  hard,  therefore,  for  Browning  to 
have  chosen  a  better  example  for  his  study  of  intellec- 
tual egotism  than  Paracelsus.  Modern  life  accuses  the 
mediaeval  tradition  of  crushing  the  intellect;  Brown- 
ing, with  a  truer  instinct,  accuses  that  tradition  of 
over-glorifying  it.  There  is,  however,  another  and  even 
more  important  deduction  to  be  made  from  the  moral 
of  Paracelsus.  The  usual  accusation  against  Browning 
is  that  he  was  consumed  with  logic ;  that  he  thought  all 
subjects  to  be  the  proper  pabulum  of  intellectual  dis- 
quisition ;  that  he  gloried  chiefly  in  his  own  power  of 
plucking  knots  to  pieces  and  rending  fallacies  in  two  ; 
and  that  to  this  method  he  sacrificed  deliberately,  and 
with  complete  self-complacency,  the  element  of  poetry 
and  sentiment.  To  people  who  imagine  Browning  to 
have  been  this  frigid  believer  in  the  intellect  there  is 
only  one  answer  necessary  or  sufficient.  It  is  the  fact 
that  he  wrote  a  play  designed  to  destroy  the  whole  of 
this  intellectualist  fallacy  at  the  age  of  twenty-three. 

Paracelsus  was  in  all  likelihood  BroAvning's  intro- 


26  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

duction  to  the  literary  world.  It  was  many  years, 
and  even  many  decades,  before  he  had  anything  like 
a  public  appreciation,  but  a  very  great  part  of  the 
minority  of  those  who  were  destined  to  appreciate  him 
came  over  to  his  standard  upon  the  publication  of 
Paracelsus.  The  celebrated  John  Forster  had  taken 
up  Paracelsus  "  as  a  thing  to  slate,"  and  had  ended  its 
perusal  with  the  wildest  curiosity  about  the  author 
and  his  works.  John  Stuart  Mill,  never  backward  in 
generosity,  had  already  interested  himself  in  Browning, 
and  was  finally  converted  by  the  same  poem.  Among 
other  early  admirers  were  Landor,  Leigh  Hunt,  Home, 
Serjeant  Talfourd,  and  Monckton  Milnes.  One  man 
of  even  greater  literary  stature  seems  to  have  come 
into  Browning's  life  about  this  time,  a  man  for  whom 
he  never  ceased  to  have  the  warmest  affection  and 
trust.  Browning  was,  indeed,  one  of  the  very  few 
men  of  that  period  who  got  on  perfectly  with  Thomas 
Carlyle.  It  is  precisely  one  of  those  little  things  which 
speak  volumes  for  the  honesty  and  unfathomable  good 
humour  of  Browning,  that  Carlyle,  who  had  a  reckless 
contempt  for  most  other  poets  of  his  day,  had  some- 
thing amounting  to  a  real  attachment  to  him.  He 
would  run  over  to  Paris  for  the  mere  privilege  of 
dining  with  him.  Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
characteristic  impetuosity,  passionately  defended  and 
justified  Carlyle  in  all  companies.  "I  have  just  seen 
dear  Carlyle,"  he  writes  on  one  occasion;  "catch  me 
calling  people  dear  in  a  hurry,  except  in  a  letter 
beginning."  He  sided  with  Carlyle  in  the  vexed 
question  of  the  Carlyle  domestic  relations,  and  his 
impression  of  Mrs.  Carlyle  was  that  she  was  "  a  hard 
unlovable  woman."  As,  however,  it  is  on  record  that 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  27 

he  once,  while  excitedly  explaining  some  point  of 
mystical  philosophy,  put  down  Mrs.  Carlyle's  hot 
kettle  on  the  hearthrug,  any  frigidity  that  he  may 
have  observed  in  her  manner  may  possibly  find  a 
natural  explanation.  His  partisanship  in  the  Carlyle 
affair,  which  was  characteristically  headlong  and  hu- 
man, may  not  throw  much  light  on  that  painful  prob- 
lem itself,  but  it  throws  a  great  deal  of  light  on  the 
character  of  Browning,  which  was  pugnaciously  proud 
of  its  friends,  and  had  what  may  almost  be  called  a 
lust  of  loyalty.  Browning  was  not  capable  of  that  most 
sagacious  detachment  which  enabled  Tennyson  to  say 
that  he  could  not  agree  that  the  Carlyles  ought  never 
to  have  married,  since  if  they  had  each  married  else- 
where there  would  have  been  four  miserable  people 
instead  of  two. 

Among  the  motley  and  brilliant  crowd  with  which 
Browning  had  now  begun  to  mingle,  there  was  no 
figure  more  eccentric  and  spontaneous  than  that  of 
Macready  the  actor.  This  extraordinary  person,  a 
man  living  from  hand  to  mouth  in  all  things  spiritual 
and  pecuniary,  a  man  feeding  upon  flying  emotions, 
conceived  something  like  an  attraction  towards 
Browning,  spoke  of  him  as  the  very  ideal  of  a  young 
poet,  and  in  a  moment  of  peculiar  excitement  sug- 
gested to  him  the  writing  of  a  great  play.  Browning 
was  a  man  fundamentally  indeed  more  steadfast  and 
prosaic,  but  on  the  surface  fully  as  rapid  and  easily 
infected  as  Macready.  He  immediately  began  to  plan 
out  a  great  historical  play,  and  selected  for  his  subject 
"  Strafford." 

In  Browning's  treatment  of  the  subject  there  is  some- 
thing more  than  a  trace  of  his  Puritan  and  Liberal 


28  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

upbringing.  It  is  one  of  the  very  earliest  of  the 
really  important  works  in  English  literature  which  are 
based  on  the  Parliamentarian  reading  of  the  incidents 
of  the  time  of  Charles  I.  It  is  true  that  the  finest 
element  in  the  play  is  the  opposition  between  Straff  ord 
and  Pym,  an  opposition  so  complete,  so  lucid,  so  con- 
sistent, that  it  has,  so  to  speak,  something  of  the  friendly 
openness  and  agreement  which  belongs  to  an  alliance. 
The  two  men  love  each  other  and  fight  each  other,  and 
do  the  two  things  at  the  same  time  completely.  This 
is  a  great  thing  of  which  even  to  attempt  the  descrip- 
tion. It  is  easy  to  have  the  impartiality  which  can 
speak  judicially  of  both  parties,  but  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  have  that  larger  and  higher  impartiality  which  can 
speak  passionately  on  behalf  of  both  parties.  Never- 
theless, it  may  be  permissible  to  repeat  that  there  is 
in  the  play  a  definite  trace  of  Browning's  Puritan 
education  and  Puritan  historical  outlook. 

For  Strajford  is,  of  course,  an  example  of  that  most 
difficult  of  all  literary  works  —  a  political  play.  The 
thing  has  been  achieved  once  at  least  admirably  in 
Shakespeare's  Julius  Caesar,  and  something  like  it, 
though  from  a  more  one-sided  and  romantic  stand- 
point, has  been  done  excellently  in  L'Aiglon.  But 
the  difficulties  of  such  a  play  are  obvious  on  the  face 
of  the  matter.  In  a  political  play  the  principal  char- 
acters are  not  merely  men.  They  are  symbols,  arith- 
metical figures  representing  millions  of  other  men 
outside.  It  is,  by  dint  of  elaborate  stage  management, 
possible  to  bring  a  mob  upon  the  boards,  but  the 
largest  mob  ever  known  is  nothing  but  a  floating 
atom  of  the  people;  and  the  people  of  which  the 
politician  has  to  think  does  not  consist  of  knots  of 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  29 

rioters  in  the  street,  but  of  some  million  absolutely 
distinct  individuals,  each  sitting  in  his  own  break- 
fast room  reading  his  own  morning  paper.  To 
give  even  the  faintest  suggestion  of  the  strength 
and  size  of  the  people  in  this  sense  in  the  course 
of  a  dramatic  performance  is  obviously  impossi- 
ble. That  is  why  it  is  so  easy  on  the  stage  to 
concentrate  all  the  pathos  and  dignity  upon  such 
persons  as  Charles  I.  and  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  the 
vampires  of  their  people,  because  within  the  minute 
limits  of  a  stage  there  is  room  for  their  small  virtues 
and  no  room  for  their  enormous  crimes.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  find  a  stronger  example  than  the  case 
of  Strafford.  It  is  clear  that  no  one  could  possibly 
tell  the  whole  truth  about  the  life  and  death  of  Straf- 
ford.  politically  considered,  in  a  play.  Strafford  was 
one  of  the  greatest  men  ever  born  in  England,  and  he 
attempted  to  found  a  great  English  official  despotism. 
That  is  to  say,  he  attempted  to  found  something  which 
is  so  different  from  what  has  actually  come  about  that 
we  can  in  reality  scarcely  judge  of  it,  any  more  than 
we  can  judge  whether  it  would  be  better  to  live  in 
another  planet,  or  pleasanter  to  have  been  born  a  dog 
or  an  elephant.  It  would  require  enormous  imagina- 
tion to  reconstruct  the  political  ideals  of  Strafford. 
Now  Browning,  as  we  all  know,  got  over  the  matter  in 
his  play,  by  practically  denying  that  Strafford  had  any 
political  ideals  at  all.  That  is  to  say,  while  crediting 
Strafford  with  all  his  real  majesty  of  intellect  and 
character,  he  makes  the  whole  of  his  political  action 
dependent  upon  his  passionate  personal  attachment  to 
the  King.  This  is  unsatisfactory ;  it  is  in  reality  a 
dodging  of  the  great  difficulty  of  the  political  play. 


30  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

That  difficulty,  in  the  case  of  any  political  problem, 
is,  as  has  been  said,  great.  It  would  be  very  hard, 
for  example,  to  construct  a  play  about  Mr.  Gladstone's 
Home  Rule  Bill.  It  would  be  almost  impossible  to 
get  expressed  in  a  drama  of  some  five  acts  and  some 
twenty  characters  anything  so  ancient  and  compli- 
cated as  that  Irish  problem,  the  roots  of  which  lie  in 
the  darkness  of  the  age  of  Strongbow,  and  the  branches 
of  which  spread  out  to  the  remotest  commonwealths 
of  the  East  and  West.  But  we  should  scarcely  be 
satisfied  if  a  dramatist  overcame  the  difficulty  by 
ascribing  Mr.  Gladstone's  action  in  the  Home  Rule 
question  to  an  overwhelming  personal  affection  for 
Mr.  Healy.  And  in  thus  basing  Strafford's '  action 
upon  personal  and  private  reasons,  Browning  certainly 
does  some  injustice  to  the  political  greatness  of  Straf- 
ford.  To  attribute  Mr.  Gladstone's  conversion  to  Home 
Rule  to  an  infatuation  such  as  that  suggested  above, 
would  certainly  have  the  air  of  implying  that  the 
writer  thought  the  Home  Rule  doctrine  a  peculiar  or 
untenable  one.  Similarly,  Browning's  choice  of  a 
motive  for  Strafford  has  very  much  the  air  of  an  as- 
sumption that  there  was  nothing  to  be  said  on  public 
grounds  for  Strafford's  political  ideal.  Now  this  is 
certainly  not  the  case.  The  Puritans  in  the  great 
struggles  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  may  have  possessed 
more  valuable  ideals  than  the  Royalists,  but  it  is  a 
very  vulgar  error  to  suppose  that  they  were  any  more 
idealistic.  In  Browning's  play  Pym  is  made  almost 
the  incarnation  of  public  spirit,  and  Strafford  of  pri- 
vate ties.  But  not  only  may  an  upholder  of  despotism 
be  public-spirited,  but  in  the  case  of  prominent  up- 
holders of  it  like  Strafford  he  generally  is.  Despotism 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  SI 

indeed,  and  attempts  at  despotism,  like  that  of  Straf- 
ford,  are  a  kind  of  disease  of  public  spirit.  They  rep- 
resent, as  it  were,  the  drunkenness  of  responsibility. 
It  is  when  men  begin  to  grow  desperate  in  their  love 
for  the  people,  when  they  are  overwhelmed  with  the 
difficulties  and  blunders  of  humanity,  that  they  fall  back 
upon  a  wild  desire  to  manage  everything  themselves. 
Their  faith  in  themselves  is  only  a  disillusionment 
with  mankind.  They  are  in  that  most  dreadful  posi- 
tion, dreadful  alike  in  personal  and  public  affairs  — 
the  position  of  the  man  who  has  lost  faith  and  not  lost 
love.  This  belief  that  all  would  go  right  if  we  could 
only  get  the  strings  into  our  own  hands  is  a  fallacy  al- 
most without  exception,  but  nobody  can  justly  say  that 
it  is  not  public-spirited.  The  sin  and  sorrow  of  despot- 
ism is  not  that  it  does  not  love  men,  but  that  it  loves 
them  too  much  and  trusts  them  too  little.  Therefore 
from  age  to  age  in  history  arise  these  great  despotic 
dreamers,  whether  they  be  Royalists  or  Imperialists 
or  even  Socialists,  who  have  at  root  this  idea,  that  the 
world  would  enter  into  rest  if  it  went  their  way  and 
forswore  altogether  the  right  of  going  its  own  way. 
When  a  man  begins  to  think  that  the  grass  will  not 
grow  at  night  unless  he  lies  awake  to  watch  it,  he 
generally  ends  either  in  an  asylum  or  on  the  throne 
of  an  Emperor.  Of  these  men  Strafford  was  one,  and 
we  cannot  but  feel  that  Browning  somewhat  narrows 
the  significance  and  tragedy  of  his  place  in  history 
by  making  him  merely  the  champion  of  a  personal 
idiosyncrasy  against  a  great  public  demand.  Strafford 
was  something  greater  than  this ;  if  indeed,  when  we 
come  to  think  of  it,  a  man  can  be  anything  greater 
than  the  friend  of  another  man.  But  the  whole 


32  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

question  is  interesting,  because  Browning,  although  he 
never  again  attacked  a  political  drama  of  such  palpa- 
ble importance  as  Strafford,  could  never  keep  politics 
altogether  out  of  his  dramatic  work.  King  Victor  and 
King  Charles,  which  followed  it,  is  a  political  play,  the 
study  of  a  despotic  instinct  much  meaner  than  that  of 
Strafford.  Colombe's  Birthday,  again,  is  political  as 
well  as  romantic.  Politics  in  its  historic  aspect  would 
seem  to  have  had  a  great  fascination  for  him,  as  indeed 
it  must  have  for  all  ardent  intellects,  since  it  is  the 
one  thing  in  the  world  that  is  as  intellectual  as  the 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica  and  as  rapid  as  the  Derby. 

One  of  the  favourite  subjects  among  those  who  like 
to  conduct  long  controversies  about  Browning  (and 
their  name  is  legion)  is  the  question  of  whether  Brown- 
ing's plays,  such  as  Strafford,  were  successes  upon  the 
stage.  As  they  are  never  agreed  about  what  consti- 
tutes a  success  on  the  stage,  it  is  difficult  to  adjudge 
their  quarrels.  But  the  general  fact  is  very  simple ; 
such  a  play  as  Strafford  was  not  a  gigantic  theatrical 
success,  and  nobody,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  ever  imag- 
ined that  it  would  be.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  cer- 
tainly not  a  failure,  but  was  enjoyed  and  applauded  as 
are  hundreds  of  excellent  plays  which  run  only  for  a 
week  or  two,  as  many  excellent  plays  do,  and  as  all 
plays  ought  to  do.  Above  all,  the  definite  success  which 
attended  the  representation  of  Strafford  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  more  educated  and  appreciative  was 
quite  enough  to  establish  Browning  in  a  certain  defi- 
nite literary  position.  As  a  classical  and  established 
personality  he  did  not  come  into  his  kingdom  for  years 
and  decades  afterwards ;  not,  indeed,  until  he  was  near 
to  entering  upon  the  final  rest.  But  as  a  detached  and 
eccentric  personality,  as  a  man  who  existed  and  who 


i.]  BROWNING   IN   EARLY   LIFE  33 

had  arisen  on  the  outskirts  of  literature,  the  world 
began  to  be  conscious  of  him  at  this  time. 

Of  what  he  was  personally  at  the  period  that  he  thus 
became  personally  apparent,  Mrs.  Bridell  Fox  has  left  a 
very  vivid  little  sketch.  She  describes  how  Browning 
called  at  the  house  (he  was  acquainted  with  her  father), 
and  finding  that  gentleman  out,  asked  with  a  kind  of 
abrupt  politeness  if  he  might  play  on  the  piano.  This 
touch  is  very  characteristic  of  the  mingled  aplomb  and 
unconsciousness  of  Browning's  social  manner.  "He- 
was  then,"  she  writes,  "  slim  and  dark,  and  very  hand- 
some, and — may  I  hint  it?  —  just  a  trifle  of  a  dandy, 
addicted  to  lemon-coloured  kid  gloves  and  such  things, 
quite  the  glass  of  fashion  and  the  mould  of  form.  But 
full  of  '  ambition,'  eager  for  success,  eager  for  fame, 
and,  what  is  more,  determined  to  conquer  fame  and 
to  achieve  success."  That  is  as  good  a  portrait  as  we 
can  have  of  the  Browning  of  these  days — a  quite  self- 
satisfied,  but  not  self-conscious  young  man ;  one  who 
had  outgrown,  but  only  just  outgrown,  the  pure  roman- 
ticism of  his  boyhood,  which  made  him  run  after  gipsy 
caravans  and  listen  to  nightingales  in  the  wood ;  a  man 
whose  incandescent  vitality,  now  that  it  had  abandoned 
gipsies  and  not  yet  immersed  itself  in  casuistical  poems, 
devoted  itself  excitedly  to  trifles,  such  as  lemon-col- 
oured kid  gloves  and  fame.  But  a  man  still  above 
all  things  perfectly  young  and  natural,  professing  that 
foppery  which  follows  the  fashions,  and  not  that  sillier 
and  more  demoralising  foppery  which  defies  them. 
Just  as  he  walked  in  coolly  and  yet  impulsively  into 
a  private  drawing-room  and  offered  to  play,  so  he 
walked  at  this  time  into  the  huge  and  crowded  salon 
of  European  literature  and  offered  to  sing. 


CHAPTER  II 

EARLY    WORKS 

IN  1840  Sordello  was  published.  Its  reception  by  the 
great  majority  of  readers,  including  some  of  the  ablest 
men  of  the  time,  was  a  reception  of  a  kind  probably 
unknown  in  the  rest  of  literary  history,  a  reception 
that  was  neither  praise  nor  blame.  It  was  perhaps 
best  expressed  by  Carlyle,  who  wrote  to  say  that  his 
wife  had  read  Sordello  with  great  interest,  and  wished 
to  know  whether  Sordello  was  a  man,  or  a  city,  or  a 
book.  Better  known,  of  course,  is  the  story  of  Tenny- 
son, who  said  that  the  first  line  of  the  poem  — 

"Who  will,  may  hear  Bordello's  story  told," 
and  the  last  line  — 

"  Who  would  has  heard  Bordello's  story  told," 

were  the  only  two  lines  in  the  poem  that  he  under- 
stood, and  they  were  lies. 

Perhaps  the  best  story,  however,  of  all  the  cycle  of 
Sordello  legends  is  that  which  is  related  of  Douglas 
Jerrold.  He  was  recovering  from  an  illness ;  and  hav- 
ing obtained  permission  for  the  first  time  to  read  a 
little  during  the  day,  he  picked  up  a  book  from  a  pile 
beside  the  bed  and  began  Sordello.  No  sooner  had 
he  done  so  than  he  turned  deadly  pale,  put  down  the 

34 


CHAP,  ii.]  EARLY   WORKS  35 

book,  and  said,  "  My  God !  I'm  an  idiot.  My  health 
is  restored,  but  my  mind's  gone.  I  can't  understand 
two  consecutive  lines  of  an  English  poem."  He  then 
summoned  his  family  and  silently  gave  the  book  into 
their  hands,  asking  for  their  opinion  on  the  poem  ;  and 
as  the  shadow  of  perplexity  gradually  passed  over  their 
faces,  he  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief  and  went  to  sleep. 
These  stories,  whether  accurate  or  no,  do  undoubtedly 
represent  the  very  peculiar  reception  accorded  to  Sor- 
dello,  a  reception  which,  as  I  have  said,  bears  no  re- 
semblance whatever  to  anything  in  the  way  of  eulogy 
or  condemnation  that  had  ever  been  accorded  to  a 
work  of  art  before.  There  had  been  authors  whom 
it  was  fashionable  to  boast  of  admiring  and  authors 
whom  it  was  fashionable  to  boast  of  despising;  but 
with  Sordello  enters  into  literary  history  the  Brown- 
ing of  popular  badinage,  the  author  whom  it  is  fash- 
ionable to  boast  of  not  understanding. 

Putting  aside  for  the  moment  the  literary  qualities 
which  are  to  be  found  in  the  poem,  when  it  becomes 
intelligible,  there  is  one  question  very  relevant  to  the 
fame  and  character  of  Browning  which  is  raised  by 
Sordello  when  it  is  considered,  as  most  people  con- 
sider it,  as  hopelessly  unintelligible.  It  really  throws 
some  light  upon  the  reason  of  Browning's  obscurity. 
The  ordinary  theory  of  Browning's  obscurity  is  to  the 
effect  that  it  was  a  piece  of  intellectual  vanity  indulged 
in  more  and  more  insolently  as  his  years  and  fame 
increased.  There  are  at  least  two  very  decisive  objec- 
tions to  this  popular  explanation.  In  the  first  place,  it 
must  emphatically  be  said  for  Browning  that  in  all  the 
numerous  records  and  impressions  of  him  throughout 
his  long  and  very  public  life,  there  is  not  one  iota  of 


36  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

evidence  that  he  was  a  man  who  was  intellectually 
vain.  The  evidence  is  entirely  the  other  way.  He  was 
vain  of  many  things,  of  his  physical  health,  for  example, 
and  even  more  of  the  physical  health  which  he  con- 
trived to  bestow  for  a  certain  period  upon  his  wife. 
From  the  records  of  his  early  dandyism,  his  flowing 
hair  and  his  lemon-coloured  gloves,  it  is  probable 
enough  that  he  was  vain  of  his  good  looks.  He  was 
vain  of  his  masculinity,  his  knowledge  of  the  world,  and 
he  was,  I  fancy,  decidedly  vain  of  his  prejudices,  even, 
it  might  be  said,  vain  of  being  vain  of  them.  But 
everything  is  against  the  idea  that  he  was  much  in  the 
habit  of  thinking  of  himself  in  his  intellectual  aspect. 
In  the  matter  of  conversation,  for  example,  some  people 
who  liked  him  found  him  genial,  talkative,  anecdotal, 
with  a  certain  strengthening  and  sanative  quality  in  his 
mere  bodily  presence.  Some  people  who  did  not  like 
him  found  him  a  mere  frivolous  chatterer,  afflicted  with 
bad  manners.  One  lady,  who  knew  him  well,  said  that, 
though  he  only  met  you  in  a  crowd  and  made  some 
commonplace  remark,  you  went  for  the  rest  of  the  day 
with  your  head  up.  Another  lady  who  did  not  know 
him,  and  therefore  disliked  him,  asked  after  a  dinner 
party, "  Who  was  that  too-exuberant  financier  ?  "  These 
are  the  diversities  of  feeling  about  him.  But  they  all 
agree  in  one  point  —  that  he  did  not  talk  cleverly,  or 
try  to  talk  cleverly,  as  that  proceeding  is  understood  in 
literary  circles.  He  talked  positively,  he  talked  a  great 
deal,  but  he  never  attempted  to  give  that  neat  and 
aesthetic  character  to  his  speech  which  is  almost  in- 
variable in  the  case  of  the  man  who  is  vain  of  his 
mental  superiority.  When  he  did  impress  people  with 
mental  gymnastics,  it  was  mostly  in  the  form  of  pouring 


ii.]  EARLY   WORKS  37 

out,  with  passionate  enthusiasm,  whole  epics  written  by 
other  people,  w'uich  is  the  last  thing  that  the  literary 
egotist  would  be  likely  to  waste  his  time  over.  We 
have  therefore  to  start  with  an  enormous  psychological 
improbability  that  Browning  made  his  poems  compli- 
cated from  mere  pride  in  his  powers  and  contempt  of 
his  readers. 

There  is,  however,  another  very  practical  objection 
to  the  ordinary  theory  that  Browning's  obscurity  was  a 
part  of  the  intoxication  of  fame  and  intellectual  con- 
sideration. We  constantly  hear  the  statement  that 
Browning's  intellectual  complexity  increased  with  his 
later  poems,  but  the  statement  is  simply  not  true. 
Sordello,  to  the  indescribable  density  of  which  he 
never  afterwards  even  approached,  was  begun  before 
Stratford,  and  was  therefore  the  third  of  his  works, 
and  even  if  we  adopt  his  own  habit  of  ignoring 
Pauline,  the  second.  He  wrote  the  greater  part  of 
it  when  he  was  twenty-four.  It  was  in  his  youth,  at 
the  time  when  a  man  is  thinking  of  love  and  publicity, 
of  sunshine  and  singing  birds,  that  he  gave  birth  to  this 
horror  of  great  darkness ;  and  the  more  we  study  the 
matter  with  any  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  youth,  the 
more  we  shall  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Browning's 
obscurity  had  altogether  the  opposite  origin  to  that 
which  is  usually  assigned  to  it.  He  was  not  unin- 
telligible because  he  was  proud,  but  unintelligible  be- 
cause he  was  humble.  He  Avas  not  unintelligible 
because  his  thoughts  were  vague,  but  because  to  him 
they  were  obvious. 

A  man  who  is  intellectually  vain  does  not  make  him- 
self incomprehensible,  because  he  is  so  enormously 
impressed  with  the  difference  between  his  readers' 


40  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

ception  that  he  was  what  the  French  call  an  intellectual. 
If  we  see  Browning  with  the  eyes  of  his  particular 
followers,  we  shall  inevitably  think  this.  For  his 
followers  are  pre-eminently  intellectuals,  and  there 
never  lived  upon  the  earth  a  great  man  who  was  so 
fundamentally  different  from  his  followers.  Indeed, 
he  felt  this  heartily  and  even  humorously  himself. 
"  Wilkes  was  no  Wilkite,"  he  said,  "  and  I  arn  very 
far  from  being  a  Browningite."  We  shall,  as  I  say, 
utterly  misunderstand  Browning  at  every  step  of  his 
career  if  we  suppose  that  he  was  the  sort  of  man 
who  would  be  likely  to  take  a  pleasure  in  asserting  the 
subtlety  and  abstruseness  of  his  message.  He  took 
pleasure  beyond  all  question  in  himself;  in  the  strictest 
sense  of  the  word  he  enjoyed  himself.  But  his  con- 
ception of  himself  was  never  that  of  the  intellectual. 
He  conceived  himself  rather  as  a  sanguine  and  strenu- 
ous man,  a  great  fighter.  "  I  was  ever,"  as  he  says,  "  a 
fighter."  His  faults,  a  certain  occasional  fierceness  and 
grossness,  were  the  faults  that  are  counted  as  virtues 
among  navvies  and  sailors  and  most  primitive  men. 
His  virtues,  boyishness  and  absolute  fidelity,  and  a 
love  of  plain  words  and  things  are  the  virtues  which 
are  counted  as  vices  among  the  aesthetic  prigs  who  pay 
him  the  greatest  honour.  He  had  his  more  objec- 
tionable side,  like  other  men,  but  it  had  nothing  to  do 
with  literary  egotism.  He  was  not  vain  of  being  an 
extraordinary  man.  He  was  only  somewhat  exces- 
sively vain  of  being  an  ordinary  one. 

The  Browning  then  who  published  Sordello  we  have 
to  conceive,  not  as  a  young  pedant  anxious  to  exag- 
gerate his  superiority  to  the  public,  but  as  a  hot-headed, 
strong-minded,  inexperienced,  and  essentially  humble 


n.J  EARLY    WORKS  41 

man,  who  had  more  ideas  than  he  knew  how  to  disen- 
tangle from  each  other.  If  we  compare,  for  example, 
the  complexity  of  Browning  with  the  clarity  of  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  we  shall  realise  that  the  cause  lies 
in  the  fact  that  Matthew  Arnold  was  an  intellectual 
aristocrat,  and  Browning  an  intellectual  democrat. 
The  particular  peculiarities  of  Sordello  illustrate  the 
matter  very  significantly.  A  very  great  part  of  the 
difficulty  of  Sordello,  for  instance,  is  in  the  fact  that 
before  the  reader  even  approaches  to  tackling  the 
difficulties  of  Browning's  actual  narrative,  he  is  appar- 
ently expected  to  start  with  an  exhaustive  knowledge 
of  that  most  shadowy  and  bewildering  of  all  human 
epochs  —  the  period  of  the  Guelph  and  Ghibelline 
struggles  in  mediaeval  Italy.  Here,  of  course,  Brown- 
ing simply  betrays  that  impetuous  humility  which  we 
have  previously  observed.  His  father  was  a  student 
of  mediaeval  chronicles,  he  had  himself  imbibed  that 
learning  in  the  same  casual  manner  in  which  a  boy 
learns  to  walk  or  to  play  cricket.  Consequently  in  a 
literary  sense  he  rushed  up  to  the  first  person  he  met 
and  began  talking  about  Ecelo  and  Taurello  Salinguerra 
with  about  as  much  literary  egotism  as  an  English 
baby  shows  when  it  talks  English  to  an  Italian  organ 
grinder.  Beyond  this  the  poem  of  Sordello,  power- 
ful as  it  is,  does  not  present  any  very  significant 
advance  in  Browning's  mental  development  on  that 
already  represented  by  Pauline  and  Paracelsus.  Paul- 
ine, Paracelsus,  and  Sordello  stand  together  in.  the 
general  fact  that  they  are  all,  in  the  excellent  phrase 
used  about  the  first  by  Mr.  Johnson  Fox,  "  con- 
fessional." All  three  are  analyses  of  the  weak- 
ness which  every  artistic  temperament  finds  in 


44  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

every  one  else,  when  awakened  to  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  men,  dreamed  of  this  arrogant  self-effacement. 
He  has  written  of  himself  that  he  had  long  thought 
vaguely  of  a  being  passing  through  the  world,  obscure 
and  unnameable,  but  moulding  the  destinies  of  others  to 
mightier  and  better  issues.  Then  his  almost  faultless 
artistic  instinct  came  in  and  suggested  that  this  being, 
whom  he  dramatised  as  the  work-girl,  Pippa,  should  be 
even  unconscious  of  anything  but  her  own  happiness 
and  should  sway  men's  lives  with  a  lonely  mirth.  It 
was  a  bold  and  moving  conception  to  show  us  these 
mature  and  tragic  human  groups  all  at  the  supreme 
moment  eavesdropping  upon  the  solitude  of  a  child. 
And  it  was  an  even  more  precise  instinct  which  made 
Browning  make  the  errant  benefactor  a  woman.  A 
man's  good  work  is  effected  by  doing  what  he  does,  a 
woman's  by  being  what  she  is. 

There  is  one  other  point  about  Pippa  Passes  which 
is  worth  a  moment's  attention.  The  great  difficulty 
with  regard  to  the  understanding  of  Browning  is  the 
fact  that,  to  all  appearance,  scarcely  any  one  can  be 
induced  to  take  him  seriously  as  a  literary  artist.  His 
adversaries  consider  his  literary  vagaries  a  disqualifica- 
tion for  every  position  among  poets ;  and  his  admirers 
regard  those  vagaries  with  the  affectionate  indulgence 
of  a  circle  of  maiden  aunts  towards  a  boy  home  for  the 
holidays.  Browning  is  supposed  to  do  as  he  likes  with 
form,  because  he  had  such  a  profound  scheme  of 
thought.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  though  few  of  his 
followers  will  take  Browning's  literary  form  seriously, 
he  took  his  own  literary  form  very  seriously.  Now 
Pippa  Passes  is,  among  other  things,  eminently  re- 
markable as  a  very  original  artistic  form,  a  series  of 


ii.]  EARLY    WORKS  45 

disconnected  but  dramatic  scenes  which  have  only  in 
common  the  appearance  of  one  figure.  For  this  admir- 
able literary  departure  Browning,  amid  all  the  lauda- 
tions of  his  "  mind  "  and  his  "  message,"  has  scarcely 
ever  had  credit.  And  just  as  we  should,  if  we  took 
Browning  seriously  as  a  poet,  see  that  he  had  made 
many  noble  literary  forms,  so  we  should  also  see  that 
he  did  make  from  time  to  time  certain  definite  literary 
mistakes.  There  is  one  of  them,  a  glaring  one,  in 
Pippa  Passes;  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  no  critic  has 
ever  thought  enough  of  Browning  as  an  artist  to  point 
it  out.  It  is  a  gross  falsification  of  the  whole  beauty 
of  Piwpa  Passes  to  make  the  Monseigneur  and  his 
accomplice  in  the  last  act  discuss  a  plan  touching 
the  fate  of  Pippa  herself.  The  whole  central  and 
splendid  idea  of  the  drama  is  the  fact  that  Pippa  is 
utterly  remote  from  the  grand  folk  whose  lives  she 
troubles  and  transforms.  To  make  her  in  the  end  turn 
out  to  be  the  niece  of  one  of  them,  is  like  a  whiff  from 
an  Adelphi  melodrama,  an  excellent  thing  in  its  place, 
but  destructive  of  the  entire  conception  of  Pippa. 
Having  done  that,  Browning  might  just  as  well  have 
made  Sebald  turn  out  to  be  her  long  lost  brother,  and 
Luigi  a  husband  to  whom  she  was  secretly  married. 
Browning  made  this  mistake  when  his  own  splendid 
artistic  power  was  only  growing,  and  its  merits  and 
its  faults  in  a  tangle.  But  its  real  literary  merits  and 
its  real  literary  faults  have  alike  remained  unrecognised 
under  the  influence  of  that  unfortunate  intellectualism 
which  idolises  Browning  as  a  metaphysician  and  neg- 
lects him  as  a  poet.  But  a  better  test  was  coming. 
Browning's  poetry,  in  the  most  strictly  poetical  sense, 
reached  its  flower  in  Dramatic  Lyrics,  published  in 


46  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

1842.  Here  he  showed  himself  a  picturesque  and  poig- 
nant artist  in  a  wholly  original  manner.  And  the  two 
main  characteristics  of  the  work  were  the  two  charac- 
teristics most  commonly  denied  to  Browning,  both  by 
his  opponents  and  his  followers,  passion  and  beauty ; 
but  beauty  had  enlarged  her  boundaries  in  new  modes 
of  dramatic  arrangement,  and  passion  had  found  new 
voices  in  fantastic  and  realistic  verse.  Those  who 
suppose  Browning  to  be  a  wholly  philosophic  poet, 
number  a  great  majority  of  his  commentators.  But 
when  we  come  to  look  at  the  actual  facts,  they  are 
strangely  and  almost  unexpectedly  otherwise. 

Let  any  one  who  believes  in  the  arrogantly  intellec- 
tual character  of  Browning's  poetry  run  through  the 
actual  repertoire  of  the  Dramatic  Lyrics.  The  first  item 
consists  of  those  splendid  war  chants  called  "  Cavalier 
Tunes."  I  do  not  imagine  that  any  one  will  maintain 
that  there  is  any  very  mysterious  metaphysical  aim  in 
them.  The  second  item  is  the  fine  poem  "  The  Lost 
Leader,"  a  poem  which  expresses  in  perfectly  lucid 
and  lyrical  verse  a  perfectly  normal  and  old-fashioned 
indignation.  It  is  the  same,  however  far  we  carry  the 
query.  What  theory  does  the  next  poem,  "  How  they 
brought  the  Good  News  from  Ghent  to  Aix,"  express, 
except  the  daring  speculation  that  it  is  often  exciting 
to  ride  a  good  horse  in  Belgium  ?  What  theory  does 
the  poem  after  that,  "  Through  the  Metidja  to  Abd-el- 
Kadr,"  express,  except  that  it  is  also  frequently  excit- 
ing to  ride  a  good  horse  in  Africa  ?  Then  comes 
"  Nationality  in  Drinks,"  a  mere  technical  oddity  with- 
out a  gleam  of  philosophy ;  and  after  that  those  two 
entirely  exquisite  "  Garden  Fancies,"  the  first  of  which 
is  devoted  to  the  abstruse  thesis  that  a  woman  may  be 


ii.]  EARLY  WORKS  47 

charming,  and  the  second  to  the  equally  abstruse  thesis 
that  a  book  may  be  a  bore.  Then  comes  "The  Soliloquy 
of  the  Spanish  Cloister,"  from  which  the  most  ingen- 
ious "Browning  student"  cannot  extract  anything 
except  that  people  sometimes  hate  each  other  in  Spain ; 
and  then  "  The  Laboratory,"  from  which  he  could  ex- 
tract nothing  except  that  people  sometimes  hate  each 
other  in  France.  This  is  a  perfectly  honest  record  of 
the  poems  as  they  stand.  And  the  first  eleven  poems 
read  straight  off  are  remarkable  for  these  two  obvious 
characteristics  —  first,  that  they  contain  not  even  a  sug- 
gestion of  anything  that  could  be  called  philosophy  ; 
and  second,  that  they  contain  a  considerable  proportion 
of  the  best  and  most  typical  poems  that  Browning  ever 
wrote.  It  may  be  repeated  that  either  he  wrote  these 
lyrics  because  he  had  an  artistic  sense,  or  it  is  impos- 
sible to  hazard  even  the  wildest  guess  as  to  why  he 
wrote  them. 

It  is  permissible  to  say  that  the  Dramatic  Lyrics 
represent  the  arrival  of  the  real  Browning  of  literary 
history.  It  is  true  that  he  had  written  already  many 
admirable  poems  of  a  far  more  ambitious  plan  —  Para- 
celsus with  its  splendid  version  of  the  faults  of  the 
intellectual,  Pippa  Passes  with  its  beautiful  deifica- 
tion of  unconscious  influence.  But  youth  is  always 
ambitious  and  universal;  mature  work  exhibits  more 
of  individuality,  more  of  the  special  type  and  colour 
of  work  which  a  man  is  destined  to  do.  Youth  is  uni- 
versal, but  not  individual.  The  genius  who  begins 
life  with  a  very  genuine  and  sincere  doubt  whether 
he  is  meant  to  be  an  exquisite  and  idolised  violinist, 
or  the  most  powerful  and  eloquent  Prime  Minister 
of  modern  times,  does  at  last  end  by  making  the  dis- 


48  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

covery  that  there  is,  after  all,  one  thing,  possibly  a 
certain  style  of  illustrating  Nursery  Ehymes,  which 
he  can  really  do  better  than  any  one  else.  This  was 
what  happened  to  Browning ;  like  every  one  else,  he 
had  to  discover  first  the  universe,  and  then  humanity, 
and  at  last  himself.  With  him,  as  with  all  others,  the 
great  paradox  and  the  great  definition  of  life  was  this, 
that  the  ambition  narrows  as  the  mind  expands.  In 
Dramatic  Lyrics  he  discovered  the  one  thing  that  he 
could  really  do  better  than  any  one  else  —  the  dra- 
matic lyric.  The  form  is  absolutely  original :  he  had 
discovered  a  new  field  of  poetry,  and  in  the  centre  of 
that  field  he  had  found  himself. 

The  actual  quality,  the  actual  originality  of  the  form 
is  a  little  difficult  to  describe.  But  its  general  char- 
acteristic is  the  fearless  and  most  dexterous  use  of 
grotesque  things  in  order  to  express  sublime  emotions. 

•»  The  best  and  most  characteristic  of  the  poems  are  love 
poems;  they  express  almost  to  perfection  the  real 
wonderland  of  youth,  but  they  do  not  express  it  by 
the  ideal  imagery  of  most  poets  of  love.  The  imagery 
of  these  poems  consists,  if  we  may  take  a  rapid  sur- 
vey of  Browning's  love  poetry,  of  suburban  streets, 
straws,  garden-rakes,  medicine  bottles,  pianos,  window- 
blinds,  burnt  cork,  fashionable  fur  coats.  But  in  this 
new  method  he  thoroughly  expressed  the  real  essen- 
tial, the  insatiable  realism  of  passion.  If  any  one 
wished  to  prove  that  Browning  was  not,  as  he  is  said 
to  be,  the  poet  of  thought,  but  pre-eminently  one 

14  of   the   poets    of   passion,    we   could   scarcely  find   a 
better  evidence  of  this  profoundly  passionate  element 
than  Browning's  astonishing  realism  in  love  poetry.  • 
There  is  nothing  so  fiercely  realistic  as  sentiment  and 


ii.]  EARLY   WORKS  4* 

emotion.  Thought  and  the  intellect  are  content  to  ac- 
cept abstractions,  summaries,  and  generalisations;  they 
are  content  that  ten  acres  of  ground  should  be  called 
for  the  sake  of  argument  X,  and  ten  widows'  incomes 
called  for  the  sake  of  argument  Y ;  they  are  content 
that  a  thousand  awful  and  mysterious  disappearances 
from  the  visible  universe  should  be  summed  up  as 
the  mortality  of  a  district,  or  that  ten  thousand  intoxi- 
cations of  the  soul  should  bear  the  general  name  of  the 
instinct  of  sex.  Rationalism  can  live  upon  air  and  signs 
and  numbers.  But  sentiment  must  have  reality ;  emo- 
tion demands  the  real  fields,  the  real  widows'  homes, 
the  real  corpse,  and  the  real  woman.  And  therefore 
Browning's  love  poetry  is  the  finest  love  poetry  in  the 
world,  because  it  does  not  talk  about  raptures  and 
ideals  and  gates  of  heaven,  but  about  window-panes  and 
gloves  and  garden  walls.  It  does  not  deal  much  with 
abstractions ;  it  is  the  truest  of  all  love  poetry,  be- 
cause it  does  not  speak  much  about  love.  It  awakens 
in  every  man  the  memories  of  that  immortal  instant 
when  common  and  dead  things  had  a  meaning  beyond 
the  power  of  any  dictionary  to  utter,  and  a  value  be- 
yond the  power  of  any  millionaire  to  compute.  He  ex- 
presses the  celestial  time  when  a  man  does  not  think 
about  heaven,  but  about  a  parasol.  And  therefore  he 
is  first  the  greatest  of  love  poets,  and  secondly  the  only 
optimistic  philosopher  except  Whitman. 

The  general  accusation  against  Browning  in  connec- 
tion with  his  use  of  the  grotesque  comes  in  very  defi- 
nitely here  ;  for  in  using  these  homely  and  practical 
images,  these  allusions,  bordering  on  what  many  would 
call  the  commonplace,  he  was  indeed  true  to  the  actual 
and  abiding  spirit  of  love.  In  that  delightful  poem 


60  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

"  Youth  and  Art "  we  have  the  singing  girl  saying  to 
her  old  lover  — 

"No  harm  !     It  was  not  my  fault, 

If  you  never  turned  your  eye's  tail  up 
As  I  shook  -upon  E  in  alt, 

Or  ran  the  chromatic  scale  up." 

This  is  a  great  deal  more  like  the  real  chaff  that 
passes  between  those  whose  hearts  are  full  of  new  hope 
or  of  old  memory  than  half  the  great  poems  of  the 
world.  Browning  never  forgets  the  little  details  which 
to  a  man  who  has  ever  really  lived  may  suddenly  send 
an  arrow  through  the  heart.  Take,  for  example,  such 
a  matter  as  dress,  as  it  is  treated  in  "A  Lover's 
Quarrel." 

"  See,  how  she  looks  now,  dressed 
In  a  sledging  cap  and  vest ! 

"Pis  a  huge  fur  cloak  — 

Like  a  reindeer's  yoke 
Falls  the  lappet  along  the  breast : 
Sleeves  for  her  arms  to  rest, 
Or  to  hang,  as  my  Love  likes  best." 

That  would  almost  serve  as  an  order  to  a  dressmaker, 
and  is  therefore  poetry,  or  at  least  excellent  poetry  of 
this  order.  So  great  a  power  have  these  dead  things 
of  taking  hold  on  the  living  spirit,  that  I  question 
whether  any  one  could  read  through  the  catalogue  of  a 
miscellaneous  auction  sale  without  coming  upon  things 
which,  if  realised  for  a  moment,  would  be  near  to  the 
elemental  tears.  And  if  any  of  us  or  all  of  us  are 
truly  optimists,  and  believe  as  Browning  did,  that 
existence  has  a  value  wholly  inexpressible,  we  are 
most  truly  compelled  to  that  sentiment  not  by  any 
argument  or  triumphant  justification  of  the  cosmos, 


ii.]  EARLY   WORKS  51 

but  by  a  few  of  these  momentary  and  immortal  sights 
and  sounds,  a  gesture,  an  old  song,  a  portrait,  a  piano, 
an  old  door. 

In  1843  appeared  that  marvellous  drama  The  Return 
of  the  Druses,  a  work  which  contains  more  of  Brown- 
ing's typical  qualities  exhibited  in  an  exquisite  literary 
shape,  +jian  can  easily  be  counted.  We  have  in  The 
Return  of  the  Druses  his  love  of  the  corners  of  history 
his  interest  in  the  religious  mind  of  the  East,  with  its 
almost  terrifying  sense  of  being  in  the  hand  of  heaven, 
his  love  of  colour  and  verbal  luxury,  of  gold  and  green 
and  purple,  which  made  some  think  he  must  be  an 
Oriental  himself.  But,  above  all,  it  presents  the  first 
rise  of  that  great  psychological  ambition  which  Brown- 
ing was  thenceforth  to  pursue.  In  Pauline  and  the 
poems  that  follow  it,  Browning  has  only  the  compara- 
tively easy  task  of  giving  an  account  of  himself.  In 
Pippa  Passes  he  has  the  only  less  easy  task  of  giving  an 
account  of  humanity.  In  TJie  Return  of  the  Druses  he 
has  for  the  first  time  the  task  which  is  so  much  harder 
than  giving  an  account  of  humanity — the  task  of  giving 
an  account  of  a  human  being.  Djabal,  the  great  Orien- 
tal impostor,  who  is  the  central  character  of  the  play,  is 
a  peculiarly  subtle  character,  a  compound  of  blasphe- 
mous and  lying  assumptions  of  Godhead  with  genuine 
and  stirring  patriotic  and  personal  feelings :  he  is  a 
blend,  so  to  speak,  of  a  base  divinity  and  of  a  noble 
humanity.  He  is  supremely  important  in  the  history 
of  Browning's  mind,  for  he  is  the  first  of  that  great  series 
of  the  apologiae  of  apparently  evil  men,  on  which  the 
poet  was  to  pour  out  so  much  of  his  imaginative  wealth 
— Djabal,  Fra  Lippo,  Bishop  Blougram,  Sludge,  Prince 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau,andtheheroof  FifineattheFair. 


52  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

With  this  play,  so  far  as  any  point  can  be  fixed  for 
the  matter,  he  enters  for  the  first  time  on  the  most  val- 
uable of  all  his  labours — the  defence  of  the  indefensi- 
ble. It  may  be  noticed  that  Browning  was  not  in  the 
least  content  with  the  fact  that  certain  human  frailties 
had  always  lain  more  or  less  under  an  implied  indul- 
gence; that  all  human  sentiment  had  agreed  that  a 
profligate  might  be  generous,  or  that  a  drunkard  might 
be  high-minded.  He  was  insatiable:  he  wished  to  go 
further  and  show  in  a  character  like  Djabal  that  an 
impostor  might  be  generous  and  that  a  liar  might  be 
high-minded.  In  all  his  life,  it  must  constantly  be  re- 
membered, he  tried  always  the  most  difficult  things. 
Just  as  he  tried  the  queerest  metres  and  attempted  to 
manage  them,  so  he  tried  the  queerest  human  souls 
and  attempted  to  stand  in  their  place.  Charity  was  his 
basic  philosophy ;  but  it  was,  as  it  were,  a  fierce  char- 
ity, a  charity  that  went  man-hunting.  He  was  a  kind 
of  cosmic  detective  who  walked  into  the  foulest  of 
thieves'  kitchens  and  accused  men  publicly  of  virtue. 
The  character  of  Djabal  in  The  Return  of  the  Druses  is 
the  first  of  this  long  series  of  forlorn  hopes  for  the  re- 
lief of  long  surrendered  castles  of  misconduct.  As  we 
shall  see,  even  realising  the  humanity  of  a  noble  im- 
postor like  Djabal  did  not  content  his  erratic  hunger 
for  goodness.  He  went  further  again,  and  realised  the 
humanity  of  a  mean  impostor  like  Sludge.  But  in  all 
things  he  retained  this  essential  characteristic,  that  he 
was  not  content  with  seeking  sinners — he  sought  the 
sinners  whom  even  sinners  cast  out. 

Browning's  feeling  of  ambition  in  the  matter  of  the 
drama  continued  to  grow  at  this  time.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  he  had  every  natural  tendency  to  be 


ii.]  EARLY    WORKS  63 

theatrical,  though  he  lacked  the  essential  lucidity. 
He  was  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  particularly  unsuc- 
cessful dramatist ;  but  in  the  world  of  abstract  temper- 
aments he  was  by  nature  an  unsuccessful  dramatist. 
He  was,  that  is  to  say,  a  man  who  loved  above  all 
things  plain  and  sensational  words,  open  catastrophes, 
a  clear  and  ringing  conclusion  to  everything.  But  it 
so  happened,  unfortunately,  that  his  own  words  were 
not  plain;  that  his  catastrophes  came  with  a  crashing 
and  sudden  unintelligibleness  which  left  men  in  doubt 
whether  the  thing  were  a  catastrophe  or  a  great  stroke 
of  good  luck;  that  his  conclusion,  though  it  rang  like 
a  trumpet  to  the  four  corners  of  heaven,  was  in  its 
actual  message  quite  inaudible.  We  are  bound  to 
admit,  on  the  authority  of  all  his  best  critics  and 
admirers,  that  his  plays  were  not  failures,  but  we  can 
all  feel  that  they  should  have  been.  He  was,  as  it 
were,  by  nature  a  neglected  dramatist.  He  was  one 
of  those  who  achieve  the  reputation,  in  the  literal 
sense,  of  eccentricity  by  their  frantic  efforts  to  reach 
the  centre. 

A  Blot  on  the  '/Scutcheon  followed  Tlie  Return  of  the 
Druses.  In  connection  with  the  performance  of  this 
very  fine  play  a  quarrel  arose  which  would  not  be 
worth  mentioning  if  it  did  not  happen  to  illustrate  the 
curious  energetic  simplicity  of  Browning's  character. 
Macready,  who  was  in  desperately  low  financial  circum- 
stances at  this  time,  tried  by  every  means  conceiv- 
able to  avoid  playing  the  part ;  he  dodged,  he  shuffled, 
he  tried  every  evasion  that  occurred  to  him,  but  it  never 
occurred  to  Browning  to  see  what  he  meant.  He 
pushed  off  the  part  upon  Phelps,  and  Browning  was 
contented ;  he  resumed  it,  and  Browning  was  only 


64  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP,  n 

discontented  on  behalf  of  Phelps.  The  two  had  a 
quarrel ;  they  were  both  headstrong,  passionate  men, 
but  the  quarrel  dealt  entirely  with  the  unfortunate 
condition  of  Phelps.  Browning  beat  down  his  own 
hat  over  his  eyes ;  Macready  flung  Browning's  manu- 
script with  a  slap  upon  the  floor.  But  all  the  time  it 
never  occurred  to  the  poet  that  Macready's  conduct 
was  dictated  by  anything  so  crude  and  simple  as  a 
desire  for  money.  Browning  was  in  fact  by  his  prin- 
ciples and  his  ideals  a  man  of  the  world,  but  in  his 
life  far  otherwise.  That  worldly  ease  which  is  to  most 
of  us  a  temptation  was  to  him  an  ideal.  He  was  as  it 
were  a  citizen  of  the  New  Jerusalem  who  desired  with 
perfect  sanity  and  simplicity  to  be  a  citizen  of  Mayfair. 
There  was  in  him  a  quality  which  can  only  be  most 
delicately  described ;  for  it  was  a  virtue  which  bears 
a  strange  resemblance  to  one  of  the  meanest  of  vices. 
Those  curious  people  who  think  the  truth  a  thing  that 
can  be  said  violently  and  with  ease,  might  naturally 
call  Browning  a  snob.  He  was  fond  of  society,  of 
fashion,  and  even  of  wealth  :  but  there  is  no  snobbery 
in  admiring  these  things  or  any  things  if  we  admire 
them  for  the  right  reasons.  He  admired  them  as 
worldlings  cannot  admire  them :  he  was,  as  it  were,  the 
child  who  comes  in  with  the  dessert.  He  bore  the 
same  relation  to  the  snob  that  the  righteous  man  bears 
to  the  Pharisee :  something  frightfully  close  and  simi- 
lar and  yet  an  everlasting  opposite. 


CHAPTER   III 

BROWNING   AND    HIS    MARRIAGE 

EGBERT  BROWNING  had  his  faults,  and  the  general 
direction  of  those  faults  has  been  previously  suggested. 
The  chief  of  his  faults,  a  certain  uncontrollable  brutal- 
ity of  speech  and  gesture  when  he  was  strongly  roused, 
was  destined  to  cling  to  him  all  through  his  life,  and 
to  startle  with  the  blaze  of  a  volcano  even  the  last 
quiet  years  before  his  death.  But  any  one  who  wishes 
to  understand  how  deep  was  the  elemental  honesty  and 
reality  of  his  character,  how  profoundly  worthy  he  was 
of  any  love  that  was  bestowed  upon  him,  need  only 
study  one  most  striking  and  determining  element  in 
the  question  —  Browning's  simple,  heartfelt,  and  un- 
limited admiration  for  other  people.  He  was  one  of 
a  generation  of  great  men,  of  great  men  who  had  a 
certain  peculiar  type,  certain  peculiar  merits  and 
defects.  Carlyle,  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Matthew  Arnold, 
were  alike  in  being  children  of  a  very  strenuous  and 
conscientious  age,  alike  in  possessing  its  earnestness 
and  air  of  deciding  great  matters,  alike  also  in  showing 
a  certain  almost  noble  jealousy,  a  certain  restlessness, 
a  certain  fear  of  other  influences.  Browning  alone  had 
no  fear;  he  welcomed,  evidently  without  the  least 
affectation,  all  the  influences  of  his  day.  A  very 
interesting  letter  of  his  remains  in  which  he  describes 

55 


5(5  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

his  pleasure  in  a  university  dinner.  "  Praise,"  he  says 
in  effect,  "was  given  very  deservedly  to  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Swinburne,  and  to  that  pride  of  Oxford 
men,  Clough."  The  really  striking  thing  about  these 
three  names  is  the  fact  that  they  are  united  in  Brown- 
ing's praise  in  a  way  in  which  they  are  by  no  means 
united  in  each  other's.  Matthew  Arnold,  in  one  of 
his  extant  letters,  calls  Swinburne  "a  young  pseudo- 
Shelley,"  who,  according  to  Arnold,  thinks  he  can 
make  Greek  plays  good  by  making  them  modern. 
Mr.  Swinburne,  on  the  other  hand,  has  summarised 
Clough  in  a  contemptuous  rhyme :  — 

"  There  was  a  bad  poet  named  Clough, 
Whom  his  friends  all  united  to  puff. 
But  the  public,  though  dull, 
Has  not  quite  such  a  skull 
As  belongs  to  believers  in  Clough." 

The  same  general  fact  will  be  found  through  the 
whole  of  Browning's  life  and  critical  attitude.  He 
adored  Shelley,  and  also  Carlyle  who  sneered  at  him. 
He  delighted  in  Mill,  and  also  in  Ruskin  who  rebelled 
against  Mill.  He  excused  Napoleon  III.  and  also  Lan- 
dor  who  hurled  interminable  curses  against  Napoleon. 
He  admired  all  the  cycle  of  great  men  who  all  con- 
temned each  other.  To  say  that  he  had  no  streak  of 
envy  in  his  nature  would  be  true,  but  unfair ;  for  there 
is  no  justification  for  attributing  any  of  these  great 
men's  opinions  to  envy.  But  Browning  was  really 
unique,  in  that  he  had  a  certain  spontaneous  and 
unthinking  tendency  to  the  admiration  of  others.  He 
admired  another  poet  as  he  admired  a  fading  sunset 
or  a  chance  spring  leaf.  He  no  more  thought  whether 
he  could  be  as  good  as  that  man  in  that  department 


in.]  BROWNING   AND    HIS   MARRIAGE  57 

than  whether  he  could  be  redder  than  the  sunset  or 
greener  than  the  leaf  of  spring.  He  was  naturally 
magnanimous  in  the  literal  sense  of  that  sublime  word ; 
his  mind  was  so  great  that  it  rejoiced  in  the  triumphs 
of  strangers.  In  this  spirit  Browning  had  already  cast 
his  eyes  round  in  the  literary  world  of  his  time,  and 
had  been  greatly  and  justifiably  struck  with  the  work 
of  a  young  lady  poet,  Miss  Barrett. 

That  impression  was  indeed  amply  justified.  In  a 
time  when  it  was  thought  necessary  for  a  lady  to  dilute 
the  wine  of  poetry  to  its  very  weakest  tint,  Miss  Barrett 
had  contrived  to  produce  poetry  which  was  open  to 
literary  objection  as  too  heady  and  too  high-coloured. 
When  she  erred  it  was  through  an  Elizabethan  audac- 
ity and  luxuriance,  a  straining  after  violent  meta- 
phors. With  her  reappeared  in  poetry  a  certain 
element  which  had  not  been  present  in  it  since  the 
last  days  of  Elizabethan  literature,  the  fusion  of  the 
most  elementary  human  passion  with  something  which 
can  only  be  described  as  wit,  a  certain  love  of  quaint 
and  sustained  similes,  or  parallels  wildly  logical, 
and  of  brazen  paradox  and  antithesis.  WTe  find  this 
hot  wit  as  distinct  from  the  cold  wit  of  the  school  of 
Pope,  in  the  puns  and  buffooneries  of  Shakespeare. 
We  find  it  lingering  in  Hudibras,  and  we  do  not  find 
it  again  until  we  come  to  such  strange  and  strong 
lines  as  these  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  in  her  poem  on 
Napoleon  :  — 

"Blood  fell  like  dew  beneath  his  sunrise  —  sooth 
But  glittered  dew-like  in  the  covenanted 
And  high-rayed  light.     He  was  a  despot  —  granted, 
But  the  aur6s  of  his  autocratic  mouth 
Said  '  Yea  '  i'  the  people's  Frencli !     Pie  magnified 
The  image  of  the  freedom  he  denied." 


68  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

Her  poems  are  full  of  quaint  things,  of  such  things  as 
the  eyes  in  the  peacock  fans  of  the  Vatican,  which  she 
describes  as  winking  at  the  Italian  tricolour.  She 
often  took  the  step  from  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous : 
but  to  take  this  step  one  must  reach  the  sublime. 
Elizabeth  Barrett  contrived  to  assert,  what  still  needs 
but  then  urgently  needed  assertion,  the  fact  that 
womanliness,  whether  in  life  or  poetry,  was  a  positive 
thing,  and  not  the  negative  of  manliness.  Her  verse 
at  its  best  was  quite  as  strong  as  Browning's  own,  and 
very  nearly  as  clever.  The  difference  between  their 
natures  was  a  difference  between  two  primary  colours, 
not  between  dark  and  light  shades  of  the  same  colour. 

Browning  had  often  heard  not  only  of  the  public, 
but  of  the  private  life  of  this  lady  from  his  father's 
friend  Kenyon.  The  old  man,  who  was  one  of  those 
rare  and  valuable  people  who  have  a  talent  for  estab- 
lishing definite  relationships  with  people  after  a  com- 
paratively short  intercourse,  had  been  appointed  by 
Miss  Barrett  as  her  "  fairy  godfather."  He  spoke  much 
about  her  to  Browning,  and  of  Browning  to  her,  with 
a  certain  courtly  garrulity  which  was  one  of  his  talents. 
And  there  could  be  little  doubt  that  the  two  poets 
would  have  met  long  before  had  it  not  been  for  certain 
peculiarities  in  the  position  of  Miss  Barrett.  She  was 
an  invalid,  and  an  invalid  of  a  somewhat  unique  kind, 
and  living  beyond  all  question  under  very  unique 
circum  stances. 

Her  father,  Edward  Moulton  Barrett,  had  been  a 
landowner  in  the  West  Indies,  and  thus,  by  a  some- 
what curious  coincidence,  had  borne  a  part  in  the  same 
social  system  which  stung  Browning's  father  into 
revolt  and  renunciation.  The  part  played  by  Edward 


in.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  59 

Barrett,  however,  though  little  or  nothing  is  known 
of  it,  was  probably  very  different.  He  was  a  man 
conservative  by  nature,  a  believer  in  authority  in  the 
nation  and  the  family,  and  endowed  with  some  faculties 
for  making  his  conceptions  prevail.  He  was  an  able 
man,  capable  in  his  language  of  a  certain  bitter  felicity 
of  phrase.  He  was  rigidly  upright  and  responsible, 
and  he  had  a  capacity  for  profound  affection.  But 
selfishness  of  the  most  perilous  sort,  an  unconscious 
selfishness,  was  eating  away  his  moral  foundations,  as 
it  tends  to  eat  away  those  of  all  despots.  His  most 
fugitive  moods  changed  and  controlled  the  whole 
atmosphere  of  the  house,  and  the  state  of  things  was 
fully  as  oppressive  in  the  case  of  his  good  moods  as 
in  the  case  of  his  bad  ones.  He  had,  what  is  perhaps 
the  subtlest  and  worst  spirit  of  egotism,  not  that  spirit 
merely  which  thinks  that  nothing  should  stand  in 
the  way  of  its  ill-temper,  but  that  spirit  which  thinks 
that  nothing  should  stand  in  the  way  of  its  amiability. 
His  daughters  must  be  absolutely  at  his  beck  and 
call,  whether  it  was  to  be  brow-beaten  or  caressed. 
During  the  early  years  of  Elizabeth  Barrett's  life, 
the  family  had  lived  in  the  country,  and  for  that 
brief  period  she  had  known  a  more  wholesome  life 
than  she  was  destined  ever  to  know  again  until  her 
marriage  long  afterwards.  She  was  not,  as  is  the 
general  popular  idea,  absolutely  a  congenital  invalid, 
weak,  and  almost  moribund  from  the  cradle.  In 
early  girlhood  she  was  slight  and  sensitive  indeed, 
but  perfectly  active  and  courageous.  She  was  a  good 
horsewoman,  and  the  accident  which  handicapped  her 
for  so  many  years  afterwards  happened  to  her  when 
she  was  riding.  The  injury  to  her  spine,  how- 


60  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

ever,  will  be  found,  the  more  we  study  her  his- 
tory, to  be  only  one  of  the  influences  which  were  to 
darken  those  bedridden  years,  and  to  have  among 
them  a  far  less  important  place  than  has  hitherto 
been  attached  to  it.  Her  father  moved  to  a  melan- 
choly house  in  Wimpole  Street;  and  his  own  char- 
acter growing  gloomier  and  stranger  as  time  went 
on,  he  mounted  guard  over  his  daughter's  sick- 
bed in  a  manner  compounded  of  the  pessimist  and 
the  disciplinarian.  She  was  not  permitted  to  stir 
from  the  sofa,  often  not  even  to  cross  two  rooms  to 
her  bed.  Her  father  came  and  prayed  over  her  with 
a  kind  of  melancholy  glee,  and  with  the  avowed 
solemnity  of  a  watcher  by  a  deathbed.  She  was 
surrounded  by  that  most  poisonous  and  degrading  of 
all  atmospheres  —  a  medical  atmosphere.  The  exist- 
ence of  this  atmosphere  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
actual  nature  or  prolongation  of  disease.  A  man  may 
pass  three  hours  out  of  every  five  in  a  state  of  bad 
health,  and  yet  regard,  as  Stevenson  regarded,  the 
three  hours  as  exceptional  and  the  two  as  normal. 
But  the  curse  that  lay  on  the  Barrett  household  was 
the  curse  of  considering  ill-health  the  natural  condition 
of  a  human  being.  The  truth  was  that  Edward  Barrett 
was  living  emotionally  and  sesthetically,  like  some 
detestable  decadent  poet,  upon  his  daughter's  decline. 
He  did  not  know  this,  but  it  was  so.  Scenes,  explana- 
tions, prayers,  fury,  and  forgiveness  had  become  bread 
and  meat  for  which  he  hungered ;  and  when  the  cloud 
was  upon  his  spirit,  he  would  lash  out  at  all  things 
and  every  one  with  the  insatiable  cruelty  of  the 
sentimentalist. 

It  is  wonderful  that  Elizabeth  Barrett  was  not  made 


in.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  61 

thoroughly  morbid  and  impotent  by  this  intolerable 
violence  and  more  intolerable  tenderness.  In  her 
estimate  of  her  own  health  she  did,  of  course,  suffer. 
It  is  evident  that  she  practically  believed  herself  to 
be  dying.  But  she  was  a  high-spirited  woman,  full  of 
that  silent  and  quite  unfathomable  kind  of  courage 
which  is  only  found  in  women,  and  she  took  a  much 
more  cheerful  view  of  death  than  her  father  did  of 
life.  Silent  rooms,  low  voices,  lowered  blinds,  long 
days  of  loneliness,  and  of  the  sickliest  kind  of  sym- 
pathy, had  not  tamed  a  spirit  which  was  swift  and 
headlong  to  a  fault.  She  could  still  own  with  truth 
the  magnificent  fact  that  her  chief  vice  was  impa- 
tience, "  tearing  open  parcels  instead  of  untying  them ; 
looking  at  the  end  of  books  before  she  had  read  them 
was,"  she  said,  "incurable  with  her."  It  is  difficult 
to  imagine  anything  more  genuinely  stirring  than  the 
achievement  of  this  woman,  who  thus  contrived,  while 
possessing  all  the  excuses  of  an  invalid,  to  retain  some 
of  the  faults  of  a  tomboy. 

Impetuosity,  vividness,  a  certain  absoluteness  and 
urgency  in  her  demands,  marked  her  in  the  eyes  of  all 
who  came  in  contact  with  her.  In  after  years,  when 
Browning  had  experimentally  shaved  his  beard  off,  she 
told  him.  with  emphatic  gestures  that  it  must  be  grown 
again  "  that  minute."  There  we  have  very  graphically 
the  spirit  which  tears  open  parcels.  Not  in  vain,  or 
as  a  mere  phrase,  did  her  husband  after  her  death 
describe  her  as  "  all  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire." 

She  had,  of  course,  lived  her  second  and  real  life  in 
literature  and  the  things  of  the  mind,  and  this  in  a  very 
genuine  and  strenuous  sense.  Her  mental  occupations 
were  not  mere  mechanical  accomplishments  almost 


02  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

as  colourless  as  the  monotony  they  relieved,  nor  were 
they  coloured  in  any  visible  manner  by  the  unwhole- 
some atmosphere  in  which  she  breathed.  She  used 
her  brains  seriously;  she  was  a  good  Greek  scholar, 
and  read  ^Eschylus  and  Euripides  unceasingly  with 
her  blind  friend,  Mr.  Boyd ;  and  she  had,  and  retained 
even  to  the  hour  of  her  death,  a  passionate  and  quite 
practical  interest  in  great  public  questions.  Naturally 
she  was  not  uninterested  in  Robert  Browning,  but  it 
does  not  appear  that  she  felt  at  this  time  the  same 
kind  of  fiery  artistic  curiosity  that  he  felt  about  her. 
He  does  appear  to  have  felt  an  attraction,  which  may 
almost  be  called  mystical,  for  the  personality  which 
was  shrouded  from  the  world  by  such  sombre  curtains. 
In  1845  he  addressed  a  letter  to  her  in  which  he  spoke 
of  a  former  occasion  on  which  they  had  nearly  met, 
and  compared  it  to  the  sensation  of  having  once  been 
outside  the  chapel  of  some  marvellous  illumination 
and  found  the  door  barred  against  him.  In  that 
phrase  it  is  easy  to  see  how  much  of  the  romantic 
boyhood  of  Browning  remained  inside  the  resolute 
man  of  the  world  into  which  he  was  to  all  external 
appearance  solidifying.  Miss  Barrett  replied  to  his 
letters  with  charming  sincerity  and  humour,  and  with 
much  of  that  leisurely  self-revelation  which  is  possible 
for  an  invalid  who  has  nothing  else  to  do.  She  herself, 
with  her  love  of  quiet  and  intellectual  companionship, 
would  probably  have  been  quite  happy  for  the  rest 
of  her  life  if  their  relations  had  always  remained  a 
learned  and  delightful  correspondence.  But  she  must 
have  known  very  little  of  Robert  Browning  if  she 
imagined  he  would  be  contented  with  this  airy  and 
bloodless  tie.  At  all  times  of  his  life  he  was 


in.]  BROWNING   AND   HIS    MARRIAGE  63 

sufficiently  fond  of  his  own  way ;  at  this  time  he 
was  especially  prompt  and  impulsive,  and  he  had 
always  a  great  love  for  seeing  and  hearing  and  feel- 
ing people,  a  love  of  the  physical  presence  of  friends, 
which  made  him  slap  men  on  the  back  and  hit  them 
in  the  chest  when  he  was  very  fond  of  them.  The 
correspondence  between  the  two  poets  had  not  long 
begun  when  Browning  suggested  something  which 
was  almost  a  blasphemy  in  the  Barrett  household,  that 
he  should  come  and  call  on  her  as  he  would  on  any  one 
else.  This  seems  to  have  thrown  her  into  a  flutter  of 
fear  and  doubt.  She  alleges  all  kinds  of  obstacles,  the 
chief  of  which  were  her  health  and  the  season  of  the 
year  and  the  east  winds.  "  If  my  truest  heart's  wishes 
avail,"  replied  Browning,  obstinately,  "you  shall  laugh 
at  east  winds  yet  as  I  do." 

Then  began  the  chief  part  of  that  celebrated  corre- 
spondence which  has  within  comparatively  recent  years 
been  placed  before  the  world.  It  is  a  correspondence 
which  has  very  peculiar  qualities  and  raises  many 
profound  questions. 

It  is  impossible  to  deal  at  any  length  with  the  pic- 
ture given  in  these  remarkable  letters  of  the  gradual 
progress  and  amalgamation  of  two  spirits  of  great  nat- 
ural potency  and  independence,  without  saying  at  least 
a  word  about  the  moral  question  raised  by  their  publi- 
cation and  the  many  expressions  of  disapproval  which 
it  entails.  To  the  mind  of  the  present  writer  the 
whole  of  such  a  question  should  be  tested  by  one  per- 
fectly clear  intellectual  distinction  and  comparison.  I 
am  not  prepared  to  admit  that  there  is  or  can  be,  prop- 
erly speaking,  in  the  world  anything  that  is  too  sacred  to 
be  known.  That  spiritual  beauty  and  spiritual  truth 


64  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

are  in  their  nature  communicable,  and  that  they  should 
be  communicated,  is  a  principle  which  lies  at  the  root 
of  every  conceivable  religion.  Christ  was  crucified  upon 
a  hill,  and  not  in  a  cavern,  and  the  word  Gospel  itself 
involves  the  same  idea  as  the  ordinary  name  of  a  daily 
paper.  Whenever,  therefore,  a  poet  or  any  similar  type 
of  man  can,  or  conceives  that  he  can,  make  all  men  par- 
takers in  some  splendid  secret  of  his  own  heart,  I  can 
imagine  nothing  saner  and  nothing  manlier  than  his 
course  in  doing  so.  Thus  it  was  that  Dante  made  a  new 
heaven  and  a  new  hell  out  of  a  girl's  nod  in  the  streets 
of  Florence.  Thus  it  was  that  Paul  founded  a  civilisa- 
tion by  keeping  an  ethical  diary.  But  the  one  essential 
which  exists  in  all  such  cases  as  these  is  that  the  man 
in  question  believes  that  he  can  -make  the  story  as  stately 
to  the  whole  world  as  it  is  to  him,  and  he  chooses  his 
words  to  that  end.  Yet  when  a  work  contains  expres- 
sions which  have  one  value  and  significance  when  read 
by  the  people  to  whom  they  were  addressed,  and  an 
entirely  different  value  and  significance  when  read 
by  any  one  else,  then  the  element  of  the  violation  of 
sanctity  does  arise.  But  it  is  not  because  there  is  any- 
thing in  this  world  too  sacred  to  tell.  It  is  rather  be- 
cause there  are  a  great  many  things  in  this  world  too 
sacred  to  parody.  If  Browning  could  really  convey  to 
the  world  the  inmost  core  of  his  affection  for  his  wife, 
I  see  no  reason  why  he  should  not.  But  the  objection 
to  letters  which  begin  "  My  dear  Ba,"  is  that  they  do 
not  convey  anything  of  the  sort.  As  far  as  any  third 
person  is  concerned,  Browning  might  as  well  have  been 
expressing  the  most  noble  and  universal  sentiment  in 
the  dialect  of  the  Cherokees.  Objection  to  the  publi- 
cation of  such  passages  as  that,  in  short,  is  not  the 


in.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  66 

fact  that  they  tell  us  about  the  love  of  the  Brownings, 
but  that  they  do  not  tell  us  about  it. 

Upon  this  principle  it  is  obvious  that  there  should 
have  been  a  selection  among  the  Letters,  but  not  a  se- 
lection which  should  exclude  anything  merely  because 
it  was  ardent  and  noble.  If  Browning  or  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing had  not  desired  any  people  to  know  that  they  were 
fond  of  each  other,  they  would  not  have  written  and 
published  "  One  Word  More  "  or  "  The  Sonnets  from 
the  Portuguese."  Nay,  they  would  not  have  been  mar- 
ried in  a  public  church,  for  every  one  who  is  married  in 
a  church  does  make  a  confession  of  love  of  absolutely 
national  publicity,  and  tacitly,  therefore,  repudiates 
any  idea  that  such  confessions  are  too  sacred  for  the 
world  to  know.  The  ridiculous  theory  that  men  should 
have  no  noble  passions  or  sentiments  in  public  may 
have  been  designed  to  make  private  life  holy  and  un- 
defiled,  but  it  has  had  very  little  actual  effect  except 
to  make  public  life  cynical  and  preposterously  unmean- 
ing. But  the  words  of  a  poem  or  the  words  of  the 
English  Marriage  Service,  which  are  as  fine  as  many 
poems,  is  a  language  dignified  and  deliberately  in- 
tended to  be  understood  by  all.  If  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom in  church,  instead  of  uttering  those  words,  were 
to  utter  a  poem  compounded  of  private  allusions  to  the 
foibles  of  Aunt  Matilda,  or  of  childish  secrets  which 
they  would  tell  each  other  in  a  lane,  it  would  be  a  parallel 
case  to  the  publication  of  some  of  the  Browning  Letters. 
Why  the  serious  and  universal  portions  of  those  Letters 
could  not  be  published  without  those  which  are  to  us 
idle  and  unmeaning  it  is  difficult  to  understand.  Our 
wisdom,  whether  expressed  in  private  or  public,  belongs 
to  the  world,  but  our  folly  belongs  to  those  we  love. 


GO  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

There  is  at  least  one  peculiarity  in  the  Browning 
Letters  which  tends  to  make  their  publication  far  less 
open  to  objection  than  almost  any  other  collection  of 
love  letters  which  can  be  imagined.  The  ordinary  sen- 
timentalist who  delights  in  the  most  emotional  of 
magazine  interviews,  will  not  be  able  to  get  much 
satisfaction  out  of  them,  because  he  and  many  persons 
more  acute  will  be  quite  unable  to  make  head  or  tail 
of  three  consecutive  sentences.  In  this  respect  it  is 
the  most  extraordinary  correspondence  in  the  world. 
There  seem  to  be  only  two  main  rules  for  this  form  of 
letter-writing  :  the  first  is,  that  if  a  sentence  can  begin 
with  a  parenthesis  it  always  should ;  and  the  second 
is,  that  if  you  have  written  from  a  third  to  half  of  a 
sentence  you  need  never  in  any  case  write  any  more. 
It  would  be  amusing  to  watch  any  one  who  felt  an  idle 
curiosity  as  to  the  language  and  secrets  of  lovers  open- 
ing the  Browning  Letters.  He  would  probably  come 
upon  some  such  simple  and  lucid  passage  as  the  fol- 
lowing :  "  I  ought  to  wait,  say  a  week  at  least,  having 
killed  all  your  mules  for  you,  before  I  shot  down  your 
dogs.  .  .  .  But  not  being  Phoibos  Apollon,  you  are  to 
know  further  that  when  I  did  think  I  might  go  mod- 
estly on  ...  wfjLOi,  let  me  get  out  of  this  slough  of  a 
simile,  never  rnind  with  what  dislocated  ankles." 

What  our  imaginary  sentimentalist  would  make  of 
this  tender  passage  it  is  difficult  indeed  to  imagine. 
The  only  plain  conclusion  which  appears  to  emerge 
from  the  words  is  the  somewhat  curious  one  —  that 
Browning  was  in  the  habit  of  taking  a  gun  down  to 
AVirapole  Street  and  of  demolishing  the  live  stock  on 
those  somewhat  unpromising  premises.  Nor  will  he  be 
any  better  enlightened  if  he  turns  to  the  reply  of  Miss 


in.]  BROWNING  AND  HIS  MARRIAGE  67 

Barrett,  which  seems  equally  dominated  with  the  great 
central  idea  of  the  Browning  correspondence  that  the 
most  enlightening  passages  in  a  letter  consist  of  dots. 
She  replies  in  a  letter  following  the  above  :  "  But  if  it 
could  be  possible  that  you  should  mean  to  say  you 
would  show  me.  .  .  .  Can  it  be  ?  or  am  I  reading 
this  '  Attic  contraction '  quite  the  wrong  way.  You  see 
I  am  afraid  of  the  difference  between  flattering  myself 
and  being  flattered  .  .  .  the  fatal  difference.  And 
now  you  will  understand  that  I  should  be  too  over- 
joyed to  have  revelations  from  the  Portfolio  .  .  .  how- 
ever incarnated  with  blots  and  pen  scratches  ...  to 
be  able  to  ask  impudently  of  them  now?  Is  that 
plain  ?  "  Most  probably  she  thought  it  was. 

With  regard  to  Browning  himself  this  characteristic 
is  comparatively  natural  and  appropriate.  Browning's 
prose  was  in  any  case  the  most  roundabout  affair  in  the 
world.  Those  who  knew  him  say  that  he  would  often 
send  an  urgent  telegram  from  which  it  was  absolutely 
impossible  to  gather  where  the  appointment  was,  or 
when  it  was,  or  what  was  its  object.  This  fact  is  one 
of  the  best  of  all  arguments  against  the  theory  of 
Browning's  intellectual  conceit.  A  man  would  have 
to  be  somewhat  abnormally  conceited  in  order  to  spend 
sixpence  for  the  pleasure  of  sending  an  unintelligible 
communication  to  the  dislocation  of  his  own  plans. 
The  fact  was,  that  it  was  part  of  the  machinery  of  his 
brain  that  things  came  out  of  it,  as  it  were,  backwards. 
The  words  "tail  foremost"  express  Browning's  style 
with  something  more  than  a  conventional  accuracy. 
The  tail,  the  most  insignificant  part  of  an  animal,  is 
also  often  the  most  animated  and  fantastic.  An  utter- 
ance of  Browning  is  often  like  a  strange  animal  walkin" 


68  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

backwards,  who  flourishes  his  tail  with  such  energy 
that  every  one  takes  it  for  his  head.  He  was  in  other 
words,  at  least  in  his  prose  and  practical  utterances, 
more  or  less  incapable  of  telling  a  story  without  telling 
the  least  important  thing  first.  If  a  man  who  belonged 
to  an  Italian  secret  society,  one  local  branch  of  which 
bore  as  a  badge  an  olive-green  ribbon,  had  entered  his 
house,  and  in  some  sensational  interview  tried  to  bribe 
or  blackmail  him,  he  would  have  told  the  story  with 
great  energy  and  indignation,  but  he  would  have  been 
incapable  of  beginning  with  anything  except  the 
question  of  the  colour  of  olives.  His  whole  method 
was  founded  both  in  literature  and  life  upon  the 
principle  of  the  "  ex  pede  Herculem,"  and  at  the 
beginning  of  his  description  of  Hercules  the  foot 
appears  some  sizes  larger  than  the  hero.  It  is,  in  short, 
natural  enough  that  Browning  should  have  written  his 
love  letters  obscurely,  since  he  wrote  his  letters  to  his 
publisher  and  his  solicitor  obscurely.  In  the  case  of 
Mrs.  Browning  it  is  somewhat  more  difficult  to  under- 
stand. For  she  at  least  had,  beyond  all  question,  a 
quite  simple  and  lucent  vein  of  humour,  which  does  not 
easily  reconcile  itself  with  this  subtlety.  But  she  was 
partly  under  the  influence  of  her  own  quality  of  pas- 
sionate ingenuity  or  emotional  wit  of  which  we  have 
already  taken  notice  in  dealing  with  her  poems,  and 
she  was  partly  also  no  doubt  under  the  influence  of 
Browning.  Whatever  was  the  reason,  their  corre- 
spondence was  not  of  the  sort  which  can  be  pursued 
very  much  by  the  outside  public.  Their  letters  may 
be  published  a  hundred  times  over,  they  still  remain 
private.  They  write  to  each  other  in  a  language  of 
their  own,  an  almost  exasperatingly  impressionist 


in.]  BROWNING   AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  69 

language,  a  language  chiefly  consisting  of  dots  and 
dashes  and  asterisks  and  italics,  and  brackets  and  notes 
of  interrogation.  Wordsworth  when  he  heard  after- 
wards of  their  eventual  elopement  said  with  that  slight 
touch  of  bitterness  he  always  used  in  speaking  of 
Browning,  "  So  .Robert  Browning  and  Miss  Barrett 
have  gone  off  together.  I  hope  they  understand  each 
other  —  nobody  else  would."  It  would  be  difficult  to 
pay  a  higher  compliment  to  a  marriage.  Their  common 
affection  for  Kenyon  was  a  great  element  in  their  lives 
and  in  their  correspondence.  "  I  have  a  convenient 
theory  to  account  for  Mr.  Kenyon,"  writes  Browning, 
mysteriously,  "  and  his  otherwise  unaccountable  kind- 
ness to  me."  "For  Mr.  Kenyon's  kindness,"  retorts 
Elizabeth  Barrett,  "  no  theory  will  account.  I  class  it 
with  mesmerism  for  that  reason."  There  is  something 
very  dignified  and  beautiful  about  the  simplicity 
of  these  two  poets  vying  with  each  other  in  giving 
adequate  praise  to  the  old  dilettante,  of  whom  the 
world  would"  never  have  heard  but  for  them. 
Browning's  feeling  for  him  was  indeed  especially 
strong  and  typical.  "  There,"  he  said,  pointing  after 
the  old  man  as  he  left  the  room,  "  there  goes  one  of 
the  most  splendid  men  living  —  a  man  so  noble  in  his 
friendship,  so  lavish  in  his  hospitality,  so  large-hearted 
and  benevolent,  that  he  deserves  to  be  known  all  over 
the  world  as  '  Kenyou  the  Magnificent.' "  There  is 
something  thoroughly  worthy  of  Browning  at  his  best 
in  this  feeling,  not  merely  of  the  use  of  sociability,  or 
of  the  charm  of  sociability,  but  of  the  magnificence,  the 
heroic  largeness  of  real  sociability.  Being  himself  a 
warm  champion  of  the  pleasures  of  society,  he  saw  in 
Kenyon  a  kind  of  poetic  genius  for  the  thing,  a  mission 


70  EGBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

of  superficial  philanthropy.  He  is  thoroughly  to  be 
congratulated  on  the  fact  that  he  had  grasped  the  great 
but  now  neglected  truth,  that  a  man  may  actually  be 
great,  yet  not  in  the  least  able. 

Browning's  desire  to  meet  Miss  Barrett  was  received 
on  her  side,  as  has  been  stated,  with  a  variety  of  objec- 
tions. The  chief  of  these  was  the  strangely  feminine 
and  irrational  reason  that  she  was  not  worth  seeing,  a 
point  on  which  the  seeker  for  an  interview  might  be 
permitted  to  form  his  own  opinion.  "  There  is  nothing 
to  see  in  me  nor  to  hear  in  me.  —  I  never  learned  to 
talk  as  you  do  in  London ;  although  I  can  admire  that 
brightness  of  carved  speech  in  Mr.  Kenyon  and  others. 
If  my  poetry  is  worth  anything  to  any  eye,  it  is  the 
flower  of  me.  I  have  lived  most  and  been  most  happy 
in  it,  and  so  it  has  all  my  colours.  The  rest  of  me  is 
nothing  but  a  root  fit  for  the  ground  and  dark."  The 
substance  of  Browning's  reply  was  to  the  effect,  "  I 
will  call  at  two  on  Tuesday." 

They  met  on  May  20,  1845.  A  short  time  after- 
wards he  had  fallen  in  love  with  her  and  made  her  an 
offer  of  marriage.  To  a  person  in  the  domestic  atmos- 
phere of  the  Barretts,  the  incident  would  appear  to 
have  been  paralysing.  "  I  will  tell  you  what  I  once 
said  in  jest,"  she  writes,  "if  a  prince  of  El  Dorado 
should  come  with  a  pedigree  of  lineal  descent  from 
some  signory  in  the  moon  in  one  hand  and  a  ticket  of 
good  behaviour  from  the  nearest  Independent  chapel 
in  the  other  !  — '  Why,  even  then,'  said  my  sister  Arabel, 
'  it  would  not  do.'  And  she  was  right ;  we  all  agreed 
that  she  was  right." 

This  may  be  taken  as  a  fairly  accurate  description 
of  the  real  state  of  Mr.  Barrett's  mind  on  one  subject. 


in.]  BROWNING   AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  71 

It  is  illustrative  of  the  very  best  and  breeziest  side 
of  Elizabeth  Barrett's  character  that  she  could  be  so 
genuinely  humorous  over  so  tragic  a  condition  of  the 
human  mind. 

Browning's  proposals  were,  of  course,  as  matters  stood, 
of  a  character  to  dismay  and  repel  all  those  who  sur- 
rounded Elizabeth  Barrett.  It  was  not  wholly  a  matter 
of  the  fancies  of  her  father.  The  whole  of  her  family, 
and  most  probably  the  majority  of  her  medical  advisers, 
did  seriously  believe  at  this  time  that  she  was  unfit  to 
be  moved,  to  say  nothing  of  being  married,  and  that 
a  life  passed  between  a  bed  and  a  sofa,  and  avoiding 
too  frequent  and  abrupt  transitions  even  from  one  to 
the  other,  was  the  only  life  she  could  expect  on  this 
earth.  Almost  alone  in  holding  another  opinion  and 
in  urging  her  to  a  more  vigorous  view  of  her  condition, 
stood  Browning  himself.  "  But  you  are  better,"  he 
would  say  ;  "  you  look  so  and  speak  so."  Which  of  the 
two  opinions  was  right  is,  of  course,  a  complex  medical 
matter  into  which  a  book  like  this  has  neither  the  right 
nor  the  need  to  enter.  But  this  much  may  be  stated 
as  a  mere  question  of  fact.  In  the  summer  of  1846 
Elizabeth  Barrett  was  still  living  under  the  great  family 
convention  which  provided  her  with  nothing  but  an 
elegant  deathbed,  forbidden  to  move,  forbidden  to  see 
proper  daylight,  forbidden  to  receive  a  friend  lest  the 
shock  should  destroy  her  suddenly.  A  year  or  two  later, 
in  Italy,  as  Mrs.  Browning,  she  was  being  dragged  up  hill 
in  a  wine  hamper,  toiling  up  to  the  crests  of  mountains 
at  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  riding  for  five  miles  on 
a  donkey  to  what  she  calls  "  an  inaccessible  volcanic 
ground  not  far  from  the  stars."  It  is  perfectly  incred- 
ible that  any  one  so  ill  as  her  family  believed  her  to 


72  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

be  should  have  lived  this  life  for  twenty -four  hours. 
Something  must  be  allowed  for  the  intoxication  of  a 
new  tie  and  a  new  interest  in  life.  But  such  exal- 
tations can  in  their  nature  hardly  last  a  month,  and 
Mrs.  Browning  lived  for  fifteen  years  afterwards  in  in- 
finitely better  health  than  she  had  ever  known  before. 
In  the  light  of  modern  knowledge  it  is  not  very  difficult 
or  very  presumptuous  of  us,  to  guess  that  she  had  been 
in  her  father's  house  to  some  extent  inoculated  with 
hysteria,  that  strange  affliction  which  some  people 
speak  of  as  if  it  meant  the  absence  of  disease,  but 
which  is  in  truth  the  most  terrible  of  all  diseases.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  in  1846  little  or  nothing  was 
known  of  spine  complaints  such  as  that  from  which 
Elizabeth  Barrett  suffered,  less  still  of  the  nervous 
conditions  they  create,  and  least  of  all  of  hysterical 
phenomena.  In  our  day  she  would  have  been  ordered 
air  and  sunlight  and  activity,  and  all  the  things 
the  mere  idea  of  which  chilled  the  Barretts  with 
terror.  In  our  day,  in  short,  it  would  have  been 
recognised  that  she  was  in  the  clutch  of  a  form  of 
neurosis  which  exhibits  every  fact  of  a  disease  except 
its  origin,  that  strange  possession  which  makes  the 
body  itself  a  hypocrite.  Those  who  surrounded  Miss 
Barrett  knew  nothing  of  this,  and  Browning  knew 
nothing  of  it ;  and  probably  if  he  knew  anything,  knew 
less  than  they  did.  Mrs.  Orr  says,  probably  with  a 
great  deal  of  truth,  that  of  ill-heath  and  its  sensations 
he  remained  "  pathetically  ignorant "  to  his  dying  day. 
But  devoid  as  he  was  alike  of  expert  knowledge  and 
personal  experience,  without  a  shadow  of  medical 
authority,  almost  without  anything  that  can  be  formally 
called  a  right  to  his  opinion,  he  was,  and  remained, 


in.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  73 

right.  He  at  least  saw,  he  indeed  alone  saw,  to  the 
practical  centre  of  the  situation.  He  did  not  know 
anything  about  hysteria  or  neurosis,  or  the  influence  of 
surroundings,  but  he  knew  that  the  atmosphere  of 
Mr.  Barrett's  house  was  not  a  fit  thing  for  any  hu- 
man being,  alive,  dying,  or  dead.  His  stand  upon  this 
matter  has  really  a  certain  human  interest,  since  it  is 
an  example  of  a  thing  which  will  from  time  to  time 
occur,  the  interposition  of  the  average  man  to  the  con- 
founding of  the  experts.  Experts  are  undoubtedly 
right  nine  times  out  of  ten,  but  the  tenth  time  comes, 
and  we  find  in  military  matters  an  Oliver  Cromwell 
who  will  make  every  mistake  known  to  strategy  and 
yet  win  all  his  battles,  and  in  medical  matters  a 
Robert  Browning  whose  views  have  not  a  technical 
leg  to  stand  on  and  are  entirely  correct. 

But  while  Browning  was  thus  standing  alone  in  his 
view  of  the  matter,  while  Edward  Barrett  had  to  all 
appearance  on  his  side  a  phalanx  of  all  the  sanities  and 
respectabilities,  there  came  suddenly  a  new  develop- 
ment, destined  to  bring  matters  to  a  crisis  indeed,  and 
to  weigh  at  least  three  souls  in  the  balance.  Upon 
further  examination  of  Miss  Barrett's  condition,  the 
physicians  had  declared  that  it  was  absolutely  necessary 
that  she  should  be  taken  to  Italy.  This  may,  without 
any  exaggeration,  be  called  the  turning-point  and  the 
last  great  earthly  opportunity  of  Barrett's  character. 
He  had  not  originally  been  an  evil  man,  only  a  man 
who,  being  stoical  in  practical  things,  permitted  himself, 
to  his  great  detriment,  a  self-indulgence  in  moral  things. 
He  had  grown  to  regard  his  pious  and  dying  daughter 
as  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  house  and  of  the  uni- 
verse. And  as  long  as  the  great  mass  of  authorities 


74  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAI> 

were  on  his  side,  his  illusion  was  quite  pardonable. 
His  crisis  came  when  the  authorities  changed  their 
front,  and  with  one  accord  asked  his  permission  to  send 
his  daughter  abroad.  It  was  his  crisis,  and  he  refused. 
He  had,  if  we  may  judge  from  what  we  know  of  him, 
his  own  peculiar  and  somewhat  detestable  way  of 
refusing.  Once  when  his  daughter  had  asked  a  per- 
fectly simple  favour  in  a  matter  of  expediency,  per- 
mission, that  is,  to  keep  her  favourite  brother  with  her 
during  an  illness,  her  singular  parent  remarked  that 
"  she  might  keep  him  if  she  liked,  but  that  he  had 
looked  for  greater  self-sacrifice."  These  were  the 
weapons  with  which  he  ruled  his  people.  For  the 
worst  tyrant  is  not  the  man  who  rules  by  fear; 
the  worst  tyrant  is  he  who  rules  by  love  and  plays 
on  it  as  on  a  harp.  Barrett  was  one  of  the  oppressors 
who  have  discovered  the  last  secret  of  oppression, 
that  which  is  told  in  the  fine  verse  of  Swinburne :  — 

"  The  racks  of  the  earth  and  the  rods 
Are  weak  as  the  foam  on  the  sands  ; 
The  heart  is  the  prey  for  the  gods, 
Who  crucify  hearts,  not  hands." 

He,  with  his  terrible  appeal  to  the  vibrating  con- 
sciences of  women,  was,  with  regard  to  one  of  them, 
very  near  to  the  end  of  his  reign.  When  Browning 
heard  that  the  Italian  journey  was  forbidden,  he  pro- 
posed definitely  that  they  should  marry  and  go  on  the 
journey  together. 

Many  other  persons  had  taken  cognisance  of  the  fact, 
and  were  active  in  the  matter.  Kenyon,  the  gentlest 
and  most  universally  complimentary  of  mortals,  had 
marched  into  the  house  and  given  Arabella  Barrett, 


in.]  BROWNING   AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  75 

the  sister  of  the  sick  woman,  his  opinion  of  her  father's 
conduct  with  a  degree  of  fire  and  frankness  which 
must  have  been  perfectly  amazing  in  a  man  of  his 
almost  antiquated  social  delicacy.  Mrs.  Jameson, 
an  old  and  generous  friend  of  the  family,  had  imme- 
diately stepped  in  and  offered  to  take  Elizabeth  to 
Italy  herself,  thus  removing  all  questions  of  expense  or 
arrangement.  She  would  appear  to  have  stood  to  her 
guns  in  the  matter  with  splendid  persistence  and 
magnanimity.  She  called  day  after  day  seeking  for  a 
change  of  mind,  and  delayed  her  own  journey  to  the 
continent  more  than  once.  At  length,  when  it  became 
evident  that  the  extraction  of  Mr.  Barrett's  consent  was 
hopeless,  she  reluctantly  began  her  own  tour  in  Europe 
alone.  She  went  to  Paris,  and  had  not  been  there 
many  days,  when  she  received  a  formal  call  from 
Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning, 
who  had  been  married  for  some  days.  Her  astonish- 
ment is  rather  a  picturesque  thing  to  think  about. 

The  manner  in  which  this  sensational  elopement, 
which  was,  of  course,  the  talk  of  the  whole  literary 
world,  had  been  effected,  is  narrated  as  every  one  knows, 
in  the  Browning  Letters.  Browning  had  decided  that 
an  immediate  marriage  was  the  only  solution ;  and  hav- 
ing put  his  hand  to  the  plough,  did  not  decline  even 
when  it  became  obviously  necessary  that  it  should  be  a 
secret  marriage.  To  a  man  of  his  somewhat  stormily 
candid  and  casual  disposition  this  necessity  of  secrecy 
was  really  exasperating ;  but  every  one  with  any  im- 
agination or  chivalry  will  rejoice  that  he  accepted 
the  evil  conditions.  He  had  always  had  the  courage 
to  tell  the  truth;  and  now  it  was  demanded  of  him 
to  have  the  greater  courage  to  tell  a  lie,  and  he  told 


76  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

it  with  perfect  cheerfulness  and  lucidity.  In  thus 
disappearing  surreptitiously  with  an  invalid  woman 
he  was  doing  something  against  which  there  were  un- 
doubtedly a  hundred  things  to  be  said,  only  it  happened 
that  the  most  cogent  and  important  thing  of  all  was  to 
be  said  for  it. 

It  is  very  amusing,  and  very  significant  in  the  matter 
of  Browning's  character,  to  read  the  accounts  which  he 
writes  to  Elizabeth  Barrett  of  his  attitude  towards  the 
approaching  coupde  tMdtre.  In  one  place  he  says,  sugges- 
tively enough,  that  he  does  not  in  the  least  trouble  about 
the  disapproval  of  her  father ;  the  man  whom  he  fears  as 
a  frustrating  influence  is  Kenyon.  Mr.  Barrett  could 
only  walk  into  the  room  and  fly  into  a  passion ;  and  this 
Browning  could  have  received  with  perfect  equanimity. 
"  But,"  he  says,  "  if  Kenyon  knows  of  the  matter,  I 
shall  have  the  kindest  and  friendliest  of  explanations 
(with  his  arm  on  my  shoulder)  of  how  I  am  ruining 
your  social  position,  destroying  your  health,  etc.,  etc." 
This  touch  is  very  suggestive  of  the  power  of  the  old 
worldling,  who  could  manoeuvre  with  young  people  as 
well  as  Major  Pendennis.  Kenyon  had  indeed  long 
been  perfectly  aware  of  the  way  in  which  things  were 
going  ;  and  the  method  he  adopted  in  order  to  comment 
011  it  is  rather  entertaining.  In  a  conversation  with 
Elizabeth  Barrett,  he  asked  carelessly  whether  there 
was  anything  between  her  sister  and  a  certain  Captain 
Cooke.  On  receiving  a  surprised  reply  in  the  negative, 
he  remarked  apologetically  that  he  had  been  misled 
into  the  idea  by  the  gentleman  calling  so  often  at  the 
house.  Elizabeth  Barrett  knew  perfectly  well  what  he 
meant ;  but  the  logical  allusiveness  of  the  attack  re- 
minds one  of  a  fragment  of  some  Meredithian  comedy. 


in.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  77 

The  manner  in  which  Browning  bore  himself  in  this 
acute  and  necessarily  dubious  position  is,  perhaps, 
more  thoroughly  to  his  credit  than  anything  else  in  his 
career.  He  never  came  out  so  well  in  all  his  long  years 
of  sincerity  and  publicity  as  he  does  in  this  one  act 
of  deception.  Having  made  up  his  mind  to  that  act, 
he  is  not  ashamed  to  name  it ;  neither,  on  the  other 
hand,  does  he  rant  about  it,  and  talk  about  Philistine 
prejudices  and  higher  laws  and  brides  in  the  sight  of 
God,  after  the  manner  of  the  cockney  decadent.  He 
was  breaking  a  social  law,  but  he  was  not  declaring 
a  crusade  against  social  laws.  We  all  feel,  whatever 
may  be  our  opinions  on  the  matter,  that  the  great 
danger  of  this  kind  of  social  opportunism,  this  pitting 
of  a  private  necessity  against  a  public  custom,  is  that 
men  are  somewhat  too  weak  and  self-deceptive  to  be 
trusted  with  such  a  power  of  giving  dispensations  to 
themselves.  We  feel  that  men  without  meaning  to  do 
so  might  easily  begin  by  breaking  a  social  by-law 
and  end  by  being  thoroughly  anti-social.  One  of  the 
best  and  most  striking  things  to  notice  about  Eobert 
Browning  is  the  fact  that  he  did  this  thing  considering 
it  as  an  exception,  and  that  he  contrived  to  leave  it 
really  exceptional.  It  did  not  in  the  least  degree  break 
the  rounded  clearness  of  his  loyalty  to  social  custom. 
It  did  not  in  the  least  degree  weaken  the  sanctity  of 
the  general  rule.  At  a  supreme  crisis  of  his  life  he 
did  an  unconventional  thing,  and  he  lived  and  died 
conventional.  It  would  be  hard  to  say  whether  he 
appears  the  more  thoroughly  sane  in  having  performed 
the  act,  or  in  not  having  allowed  it  to  affect  him. 

Elizabeth  Barrett  gradually  gave  way  under  the 
obstinate  and  almost  monotonous  assertion  of  Brown- 


78  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

ing  that  this  elopement  was  the  only  possible  course 
of  action.  Before  she  finally  agreed,  however,  she  did 
something,  which  in  its  curious  and  impulsive  sym- 
bolism, belongs  almost  to  a  more  primitive  age.  The 
sullen  system  of  medical  seclusion  to  which  she  had 
long  been  subjected  has  already  been  described.  The 
most  urgent  and  hygienic  changes  were  opposed  by 
many  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  safe  for  her  to 
leave  her  sofa  and  her  sombre  room.  On  the  day  on 
Avhich  it  was  necessary  for  her  finally  to  accept  or 
reject  Browning's  proposal,  she  called  her  sister  to  her, 
and  to  the  amazement  and  mystification  of  that  lady 
asked  for  a  carriage.  In  this  she  drove  into  Kegent's 
Park,  alighted,  walked  on  to  the  grass,  and  stood  lean- 
ing against  a  tree  for  some  moments,  looking  round 
her  at  the  leaves  and  the  sky.  She  then  entered 
the  cab  again,  drove  home,  and  agreed  to  the  elope- 
ment. This  was  possibly  the  best  poem  that  she  ever 
produced. 

Browning  arranged  the  eccentric  adventure  with  a 
great  deal  of  prudence  and  knowledge  of  human  nature. 
Early  one  morning  in  September  1846  Miss  Barrett 
walked  quietly  out  of  her  father's  house,  became  Mrs. 
Kobert  Browning  in  a  church  in  Marylebone,  and 
returned  home  again  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  In 
this  arrangement  Browning  showed  some  of  that  real 
insight  into  the  human  spirit  which  ought  to  make 
a  poet  the  most  practical  of  all  men.  The  incident 
was,  in  the  nature  of  things,  almost  overpoweringly 
exciting  to  his  wife,  in  spite  of  the  truly  miraculous 
courage  with  which  she  supported  it ;  and  he  desired, 
therefore,  to  call  in  the  aid  of  the  mysteriously  tran- 
quillising  effect  of  familiar  scenes  and  faces.  One 


HI.]  BROWNING  AND   HIS   MARRIAGE  79 

trifling  incident  is  worth  mentioning  which  is  almost 
nnfathomably  characteristic  of  Browning.  It  has  al- 
ready been  remarked  in  these  pages  that  he  was  pre- 
eminently one  of  those  men  whose  expanding  opinions 
never  alter  by  a  hairsbreadth  the  actual  ground  plan  of 
their  moral  sense.  Browning  would  have  felt  the  same 
things  right  and  the  same  things  wrong,  whatever  views 
he  had  held.  During  the  brief  and  most  trying  period 
between  his  actual  marriage  and  his  actual  elopement, 
it  is  most  significant  that  he  would  not  call  at  the 
house  in  AVimpole  Street,  because  he  would  have  been 
obliged  to  ask  if  Miss  Barrett  was  disengaged.  He 
was  acting  a  lie ;  he  was  deceiving  a  father ;  he  was 
putting  a  sick  woman  to  a  terrible  risk;  and  these 
things  he  did  not  disguise  from  himself  for  a  moment, 
bat  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  say  two  words  to 
a  maidservant.  Here  there  may  be  partly  the  feeling 
of  the  literary  man  for  the  sacredness  of  the  uttered 
word,  but  there  is  far  more  of  a  certain  rooted  tradi- 
tional morality  which  it  is  impossible  either  to  describe 
or  to  justify.  Browning's  respectability  was  an  older 
and  more  primeval  thing  than  the  oldest  and  most 
primeval  passions  of  other  men.  If  we  wish  to  under- 
stand him,  we  must  always  remember  that  in  dealing 
with  any  of  his  actions  we  have  not  to  ask  whether 
the  action  contains  the  highest  morality,  but  whether 
we  should  have  felt  inclined  to  do  it  ourselves. 

At  length  the  equivocal  and  exhausting  interregnum 
was  over.  Mrs.  Browning  went  for  the  second  time 
almost  on  tiptoe  out  of  her  father's  house,  accom- 
panied only  by  her  maid  and  her  dog,  which  was  only 
just  successfully  prevented  from  barking.  Before  the 
end  of  the  day  in  all  probability  Barrett  had  discov- 


80  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP.  in. 

ered  that  his  dying  daughter  had  fled  with  Browning 
to  Italy. 

They  never  saw  him  again,  and  hardly  more  than  a 
faint  echo  came  to  them  of  the  domestic  earthquake 
which  they  left  behind  them.  They  do  not  appear  to 
have  had  many  hopes,  or  to  have  made  many  attempts 
at  a  reconciliation.  Elizabeth  Barrett  had  discovered 
at  last  that  her  father  was  in  truth  not  a  man  to  be 
treated  with ;  hardly,  perhaps,  even  a  man  to  be 
blamed.  She  knew  to  all  intents  and  purposes  that 
she  had  grown  up  in  the  house  of  a  madman. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BROWNING   IN    ITALY 

THE  married  pair  went  to  Pisa  in  1846,  and  moved 
soon  afterwards  to  Florence.  Of  the  life  of  the 
Brownings  in  Italy  there  is  much  perhaps  to  be  said 
in  the  way  of  description  and  analysis,  little  to  be 
said  in  the  way  of  actual  narrative.  Each  of  them 
had  passed  through  the  one  incident  of  existence.  Just 
as  Elizabeth  Barrett's  life  had  before  her  marriage  been 
uneventfully  sombre,  now  it  was  uneventfully  happy. 
A  succession  of  splendid  landscapes,  a  succession  of 
brilliant  friends,  a  succession  of  high  and  ardent  intel- 
lectual interests,  they  experienced ;  but  their  life  was 
of  the  kind  that  if  it  were  told  at  all,  would  need  to 
be  told  in  a  hundred  volumes  of  gorgeous  intel- 
lectual gossip.  How  Browning  and  his  wife  rode  far 
into  the  country,  eating  strawberries  and  drinking  milk 
out  of  the  basins  of  the  peasants  ;  how  they  fell  in  with 
the  strangest  and  most  picturesque  figures  of  Italian 
society  ;  how  they  climbed  mountains  and  read  books 
and  modelled  in  clay  and  played  on  musical  instru- 
ments ;  how  Browning  was  made  a  kind  of  arbiter 
between  two  improvising  Italian  bards ;  how  he  had 
to  escape  from  a  festivity  when  the  sound  of  Garibaldi's 
hymn  brought  the  knocking  of  the  Austrian  police; 
these  are  the  things  of  which  his  life  is  full,  trifling 
G  81 


82  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

and  picturesque  things,  a  series  of  interludes,  a  beauti- 
ful and  happy  story,  beginning  and  ending  nowhere. 
The  only  incidents,  perhaps,  were  the  birth  of  their 
son  and  the  death  of  Browning's  mother  in  1849. 

It  is  well  known  that  Browning  loved  Italy;  that 
it  was  his  adopted  country  ;  that  he  said  in  one  of  the 
finest  of  his  lyrics  that  the  name  of  it  would  be  found 
written  on  his  heart.  But  the  particular  character  of 
this  love  of  Browning  for  Italy  needs  to  be  understood. 
There  are  thousands  of  educated  Europeans  who  love 
Italy,  who  live  in  it,  who  visit  it  annually,  who  come 
across  a  continent  to  see  it,  who  hunt  out  its  darkest 
picture  and  its  most  mouldering  carving ;  but  they  are 
all  united  in  this,  that  they  regard  Italy  as  a  dead 
place.  It  is  a  branch  of  their  universal  museum,  a  de- 
partment of  dry  bones.  There  are  rich  and  cultivated 
persons,  particularly  Americans,  who  seem  to  think 
that  they  keep  Italy,  as  they  might  keep  an  aviary  or 
a  hothouse,  into  which  they  might  walk  whenever  they 
wanted  a  whiff  of  beauty.  Browning  did  not  feel  at 
all  in  this  manner ;  he  was  intrinsically  incapable  of 
offering  such  an  insult  to  the  soul  of  a  nation.  If 
he  could  not  have  loved  Italy  as  a  nation,  he  would 
not  have  consented  to  love  it  as  an  old  curiosity  shop. 
In  everything  on  earth,  from  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
amoeba,  who  is  discussed  at  such  length  in  "  Mr.  Sludge 
the  Medium/'  he  is  interested  in  the  life  in  things. 
He  was  interested  in  the  life  in  Italian  art  and  in  the 
life  in  Italian  politics. 

Perhaps  the  first  and  simplest  example  that  can  be 
given  of  this  matter  is  in  Browning's  interest  in  art. 
He  was  immeasurably  fascinated  at  all  times  by  paint- 
ing and  sculpture,  and  his  sojourn  in  Italy  gave  him, 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  83 

of  course,  innumerable  and  perfect  opportunities  for  the 
study  of  painting  and  sculpture.  But  his  interest  in 
these  studies  was  not  like  that  of  the  ordinary  cultured 
visitor  to  the  Italian  cities.  Thousands  of  such  visitors, 
for  example,  study  those  endless  lines  of  magnificent 
Pagan  busts  which  are  to  be  found  in  nearly  all  the 
Italian  galleries  and  museums,  and  admire  them,  and 
talk  about  them,  and  note  them  in  their  catalogues, 
and  describe  them  in  their  diaries.  But  the  way  in 
which  they  affected  Browning  is  described  very  sug- 
gestively in  a  passage  in  the  letters  of  his  wife. 
She  describes  herself  as  longing  for  her  husband  to 
write  poems,  beseeching  him  to  write  poems,  but  find- 
ing all  her  petitions  useless  because  her  husband  was 
engaged  all  day  in  modelling  busts  in  clay  and  breaking 
them  as  fast  as  he  made  them.  This  is  Browning's 
interest  in  art,  the  interest  in  a  living  thing,  the  interest 
in  a  growing  thing,  the  insatiable  interest  in  how  things 
are  done.  Every  one  who  knows  his  admirable  poems  on 
painting — "  Fra  Lippo  Lippi "  and  "  Andrea  del  Sarto" 
and  "  Pictor  Ignotus  "  —  will  remember  how  fully  they 
deal  with  technicalities,  how  they  are  concerned  with 
canvas,  with  oil,  with  a  mess  of  colours.  Sometimes 
they  are  so  technical  as  to  be  mysterious  to  the  casual 
reader.  An  extreme  case  may  be  found  in  that  of  a 
lady  I  once  knew  who  had  merely  read  the  title  of 
"  Pacchiarotto  and  how  he  worked  in  distemper,"  and 
thought  that  Pacchiarotto  was  the  name  of  a  dog, 
whom  no  attacks  of  canine  disease  could  keep  from 
the  fulfilment  of  his  duty.  These  Browning  poems 
do  not  merely  deal  with  painting ;  they  smell  of 
paint.  They  are  the  works  of  a  man  to  whom 
art  is  not  what  it  is  to  so  many  of  the  non-pro- 


84  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

fessional  lovers  of  art,  a  thing  accomplished,  a  valley 
of  bones  :  to  him  it  is  a  field  of  crops  continually 
growing  in  a  busy  and  exciting  silence.  Browning 
was  interested,  like  some  scientific  man,  in  the  ob- 
stetrics of  art.  There  is  a  large  army  of  educated 
men  who  can  talk  art  with  artists;  but  Browning 
could  not  merely  talk  art  with  artists  —  he  could  talk 
shop  with  them.  Personally  he  may  not  have  known 
enough  about  painting  to  be  more  than  a  fifth-rate 
painter,  or  enough  about  the  organ  to  be  more  than 
a  sixth-rate  organist.  But  there  are,  when  all  is  said 
and  done,  some  things  which  a  fifth-rate  painter  knows 
which  a  first-rate  art  critic  does  not  know ;  there  are 
some  things  which  a  sixth-rate  organist  knows  which 
a  first-rate  judge  of  music  does  not  know.  And  these 
were  the  things  that  Browning  knew. 

He  was,  in  other  words,  what  is  called  an  amateur. 
The  word  amateur  has  come  by  the  thousand  oddities 
of  language  to  convey  an  idea  of  tepidity ;  whereas 
the  word  itself  has  the  meaning  of  passion.  Nor  is  this 
peculiarity  confined  to  the  mere  form,  of  the  word ;  the 
actual  characteristic  of  these  nameless  dilettanti  is  a 
genuine  fire  and  reality.  A  man  must  love  a  thing 
very  much  if  he  not  only  practises  it  without  any  hope 
of  fame  or  money,  but  even  practises  it  without  any 
hope  of  doing  it  well.  Such  a  man  must  love  the  toils 
of  the  work  more  than  any  other  man  can  love  the 
rewards  of  it.  Browning  was  in  this  strict  sense  a 
strenuous  amateur.  He  tried  and  practised  in  the 
course  of  his  life  half  a  hundred  things  at  which  he 
can  never  have  even  for  a  moment  expected  to  succeed. 
The  story  of  his  life  is  full  of  absurd  little  ingenuities, 
such  as  the  discovery  of  a  way  of  making  pictures  by 


iv.J  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  85 

roasting  brown  paper  over  a  candle.  In  precisely  the 
same  spirit  of  fruitless  vivacity,  he  made  himself  to  a 
very  considerable  extent  a  technical  expert  in  painting, 
a  technical  expert  in  sculpture,  a  technical  expert  in 
music.  In  his  old  age,  he  shows  traces  of  being  so 
bizarre  a  thing  as  an  abstract  police  detective,  writing 
at  length  in  letters  and  diaries  his  views  of  certain 
criminal  cases  in  an  Italian  town.  Indeed,  his  own 
Ring  and  the  Book  is  merely  a  sublime  detective  story. 
He  was  in  a  hundred  things  this  type  of  man ;  he 
was  precisely  in  the  position,  with  a  touch  of  greater 
technical  success,  of  the  admirable  figure  in  Steven- 
son's story  who  said,  "  I  can  play  the  fiddle  nearly  well 
enough  to  earn  a  living  in  the  orchestra  of  a  penny 
gaff,  but  not  quite." 

The  love  of  Browning  for  Italian  art,  therefore,  was 
anything  but  an  antiquarian  fancy ;  it  was  the  love  of 
a  living  thing.  We  see  the  same  phenomenon  in  an 
even  more  important  matter  —  the  essence  and  indi- 
viduality of  the  country  itself. 

Italy  to  Browning  and  his  wife  was  not  by  any 
means  merely  that  sculptured  and  ornate  sepulchre 
that  it  is  to  so  many  of  those  cultivated  English  men 
and  women  who  live  in  Italy  and  enjoy  and  admire 
and  despise  it.  To  them  it  was  a  living  nation,  the 
type  and  centre  of  the  religion  and  politics  of  a  con- 
tinent; the  ancient  and  flaming  heart  of  Western 
history,  the  very  Europe  of  Europe.  And  they  lived 
at  the  time  of  the  most  moving  and  gigantic  of  all 
dramas  —  the  making  of  a  new  nation,  one  of  the  things 
that  makes  men  feel  that  they  are  still  in  the  morning 
of  the  earth.  Before  their  eyes,  with  every  circum- 
stance of  energy  and  mystery,  was  passing  the  panorama 


86  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

of  the  unification  of  Italy,  with  the  bold  and  roman- 
tic militarism  of  Garibaldi,  the  more  bold  and  more 
romantic  diplomacy  of  Cavour.  They  lived  in  a  time 
when  affairs  of  State  had  almost  the  air  of  works 
of  art;  and  it  is  not  strange  that  these  two  poets 
should  have  become  politicians  in  one  of  those  great 
creative  epochs  when  even  the  politicians  have  to  be 
poets. 

Browning  was  on  this  question  and  on  all  the 
questions  of  continental  and  English  politics  a  very 
strong  Liberal.  This  fact  is  not  a  mere  detail  of  purely 
biographical  interest,  like  any  view  he  might  take  of 
the  authorship  of  the  "  Eikon  Basilike  "  or  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  Tichborne  claimant.  Liberalism  was  so 
inevitably  involved  in  the  poet's  whole  view  of  exist- 
ence, that  even  a  thoughtful  and  imaginative  Conserv- 
ative would  feel  that  Browning  was  bound  to  be  a 
Liberal.  His  mind  was  possessed,  perhaps  even  to 
excess,  by  a  belief  in  growth  and  energy  and  in  the 
ultimate  utility  of  error.  He  held  the  great  central 
Liberal  doctrine,  a  belief  in  a  certain  destiny  of  the 
human  spirit  beyond,  and  perhaps  even  independent 
of,  our  own  sincerest  convictions.  The  world  was 
going  right  he  felt,  most  probably  in  his  way,  but 
certainly  in  its  own  way.  The  sonnet  which  he  wrote 
in  later  years,  entitled  "  Why  I  am  a  Liberal,"  expresses 
admirably  this  philosophical  root  of  his  politics.  It 
asks  in  effect  how  he,  who  had  found  truth  in  so  many 
strange  forms  after  so  many  strange  wanderings,  can 
be  expected  to  stifle  with  horror  the  eccentricities  of 
others.  A  Liberal  may  be  defined  approximately  as 
a  man  who,  if  he  could,  by  waving  his  hand  in  a  dark 
room,  stop  the  mouths  of  all  the  deceivers  of  mankind 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  87 

for  ever,  would  not  wave  his  hand.  Browning  was  a 
Liberal  in  this  sense. 

And  just  as  the  great  Liberal  movement  which  fol- 
lowed the  French  Revolution  made  this  claim  for  the 
liberty  and  personality  of  human  beings,  so  it  made  it 
for  the  liberty  and  personality  of  nations.  It  attached 
indeed  to  the  independence  of  a  nation  something  of 
the  same  wholly  transcendental  sanctity  which  human- 
ity has  in  all  legal  systems  attached  to  the  life  of  a 
man.  The  grounds  were  indeed  much  the  same ;  no 
one  could  say  absolutely  that  a  live  man  was  useless, 
and  no  one  could  say  absolutely  that  a  variety  of  na- 
tional life  was  useless  or  must  remain  useless  to  the 
world.  Men  remembered  how  often  barbarous  tribes 
or  strange  and  alien  Scriptures  had  been  called  in  to 
revive  the  blood  of  decaying  empires  and  civilisations. 
And  this  sense  of  the  personality  of  a  nation,  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  personalities  of  all  other  nations,  did 
not  involve  in  the  case  of  these  old  Liberals  inter- 
national bitterness ;  for  it  is  too  often  forgotten  that 
friendship  demands  independence  and  equality  fully 
as  much  as  war.  But  in  them  it  led  to  great  interna- 
tional partialities,  to  a  great  system,  as  it  were,  of 
adopted  countries  which  made  so  thorough  a  Scotch- 
man as  Carlyle  in  love  with  Germany,  and  so  thorough 
an  Englishman  as  Browning  in  love  with  Italy. 

And  while  on  the  one  side  of  the  struggle  was  this 
great  ideal  of  energy  and  variety,  on  the  other  side 
was  something  which  we  now  find  it  difficult  to  real- 
ise or  describe.  We  have  seen  in  our  own  time  a  great 
reaction  in  favour  of  monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  eccle- 
siasticism,  a  reaction  almost  entirely  noble  in  its  in- 
stinct, and  dwelling  almost  entirely  on  the  best  periods 


88  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

and  the  best  qualities  of  the  old  regime.  But  the 
modern  man,  full  of  admiration  for  the  great  virtue 
of  chivalry  which  is  at  the  heart  of  aristocracies,  and 
the  great  virtue  of  reverence  which  is  at  the  heart  of 
ceremonial  religion,  is  not  in  a  position  to  form  any 
idea  of  how  profoundly  unchivalrous,  how  astonish- 
ingly irreverent,  how  utterly  mean,  and  material,  and 
devoid  of  mystery  or  sentiment  were  the  despotic  sys- 
tems of  Europe  which  survived,  and  for  a  time  con- 
quered, the  Revolution.  The  case  against  the  Church  in 
Italy  in  the  time  of  Pio  Nono  was  not  the  case  which  a 
rationalist  would  urge  against  the  Church  of  the  time  of 
St.  Louis,  but  diametrically  the  opposite  case.  Against 
the  mediaeval  Church  it  might  be  said  that  she  was  too 
fantastic,  too  visionary,  too  dogmatic  about  the  destiny 
of  man,  too  indifferent  to  all  things  but  the  devotional 
side  of  the  soul.  Against  the  Church  of  Pio  Nono 
the  main  thing  to  be  said  was  that  it  was  simply 
and  supremely  cynical;  that  it  was  not  founded  on 
the  unworldly  instinct  for  distorting  life,  but  on  the 
worldly  counsel  to  leave  life  as  it  is ;  that  it  was  not 
the  inspirer  of  insane  hopes,  of  reward  and  miracle, 
but  the  enemy,  the  cool  and  sceptical  enemy,  of  hope 
of  any  kind  or  description.  The  same  was  true  of  the 
monarchical  systems  of  Prussia  and  Austria  and  Russia 
at  this  time.  Their  philosophy  was  not  the  philosophy 
of  the  cavaliers  who  rode  after  Charles  I.  or  Louis  XIII. 
It  was  the  philosophy  of  the  typical  city  uncle,  advis- 
ing every  one,  and  especially  the  young,  to  avoid  en- 
thusiasm, to  avoid  beauty,  to  regard  life  as  a  machine, 
dependent  only  upon  the  two  forces  of  comfort  and 
fear.  That  was,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  the  real 
reason  of  the  fascination  of  the  Napoleon  legend  —  that 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  89 

while  Napoleon  was  a  despot  like  the  rest,  he  was  a 
despot  who  went  somewhere  and  did  something,  and 
defied  the  pessimism  of  Europe,  and  erased  the  word 
"  impossible."  One  does  not  need  to  be  a  Bonapartist 
to  rejoice  at  the  way  in  which  the  armies  of  the  First 
Empire,  shouting  their  songs  and  jesting  with  their 
colonels,  smote  and  broke  into  pieces  the  armies  of 
Prussia  and  Austria  driven  into  battle  with  a  cane. 

Browning,  as  we  have  said,  was  in  Italy  at  the  time 
of  the  break-up  of  one  part  of  this  frozen  continent 
of  the  non-possumus.  Austria's  hold  in  the  north  of 
Italy  was  part  of  that  elaborate  and  comfortable  and 
wholly  cowardly  and  unmeaning  compromise,  which 
the  Holy  Alliance  had  established,  and  which  it  be- 
lieved without  doubt  in  its  solid  unbelief  would  last 
until  the  Day  of  Judgment,  though  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  what  the  Holy  Alliance  thought  would  hap- 
pen then.  But  almost  of  a  sudden  affairs  had  begun 
to  move  strangely,  and  the  despotic  princes  and  their 
chancellors  discovered  with  a  great  deal  of  astonish- 
ment that  they  were  not  living  in  the  old  age  of  the 
world,  but  to  all  appearance  in  a  very  unmanageable 
period  of  its  boyhood.  In  an  age  of  ugliness  and  rou- 
tine, in  a  time  when  diplomatists  and  philosophers 
alike  tended  to  believe  that  they  had  a  list  of  all  human 
types,  there  began  to  appear  men  who  belonged  to  the 
morning  of  the  world,  men  whose  movements  have  a 
national  breadth  and  beauty,  who  act  symbols  and  be- 
come legends  while  they  are  alive.  Garibaldi  in  his  red 
shirt  rode  in  an  open  carriage  along  the  front  of  a  hos- 
tile fort  calling  to  the  coachman  to  drive  slower,  and  not 
a  man  dared  fire  a  shot  at  him.  Mazzini  poured  out 
upon  Europe  a  new  mysticism  of  humanity  and  liberty. 


90  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

and  was  willing,  like  some  passionate  Jesuit  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  to  become  in  its  cause  either  a  philoso- 
pher or  a  criminal.  Cavour  arose  with  a  diplomacy 
which  was  more  thrilling  and  picturesque  than  war  it- 
self. These  men  had  nothing  to  do  with  an  age  of  the 
impossible.  They  have  passed,  their  theories  along 
with  them,  as  all  things  pass ;  but  since  then  we  have 
had  no  men  of  their  type  precisely,  at  once  large  and 
real  and  romantic  and  successful.  Gordon  was  a  pos- 
sible exception.  They  were  the  last  of  the  heroes. 

When  Browning  was  first  living  in  Italy,  a  telegram 
which  had  been  sent  to  him  was  stopped  on  the  frontier 
and  suppressed  on  account  of  his  known  sympathy  with 
the  Italian  Liberals.  It  is  almost  impossible  for  people 
living  in  a  commonwealth  like  ours  to  understand  how 
a  small  thing  like  that  will  affect  a  man.  It  was  not 
so  much  the  obvious  fact  that  a  great  practical  injury 
was  really  done  to  him  ;  that  the  telegram  might  have 
altered  all  his  plans  in  matters  of  vital  moment.  It 
was,  over  and  above  that,  the  sense  of  a  hand  laid  on 
something  personal  and  essentially  free.  Tyranny  like 
this  is  not  the  worst  tyranny,  but  it  is  the  most  intoler- 
able. It  interferes  with  men  not  in  the  most  serious 
matters,  but  precisely  in  those  matters  in  which  they 
most  resent  interference.  It  may  be  illogical  for  men 
to  accept  cheerfully  unpardonable  public  scandals, 
benighted  educational  systems,  bad  sanitation,  bad 
lighting,  a  blundering  and  inefficient  system  of  life,  and 
yet  to  resent  the  tearing  up  of  a  telegram  or  a  post- 
card ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  sensitiveness  of  men 
is  a  strange  and  localised  thing,  and  there  is  hardly  a 
man  in  the  world  who  would  not  rather  be  ruled  by 
despots  chosen  by  lot  and  live  in  a  city  like  a  mediaeval 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  91 

Ghetto,  than  be  forbidden  by  a  policeman  to  smoke 
another  cigarette,  or  sit  up  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later ; 
hardly  a  man  who  would  not  feel  inclined  in  such  a 
case  to  raise  a  rebellion  for  a  caprice  for  which  he  did 
not  really  care  a  straw.  Unmeaning  and  muddle- 
headed  tyranny  in  small  things,  that  is  the  thing  which, 
if  extended  over  many  years,  is  harder  to  bear  and 
hope  through  than  the  massacres  of  September.  And 
that  was  the  nightmare  of  vexatious  triviality  which 
was  lying  over  all  the  cities  of  Italy  that  were  ruled  by 
the  bureaucratic  despotisms  of  Europe.  The  history 
of  the  time  is  full  of  spiteful  and  almost  childish 
struggles — struggles  about  the  humming  of  a  tune  or 
the  wearing  of  a  colour,  the  arrest  of  a  journey,  or  the 
opening  of  a  letter.  And  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  Browning's  temperament  under  these  conditions 
was  not  of  the  kind  to  become  more  indulgent,  and 
there  grew  in  him  a  hatred  of  the  Imperial  and  Ducal 
and  Papal  systems  of  Italy,  which  sometimes  passed 
the  necessities  of  Liberalism,  and  sometimes  even  trans- 
gressed its  spirit.  The  life  which  he  and  his  wife  lived 
in  Italy  was  extraordinarily  full  and  varied,  when  we 
consider  the  restrictions  under  which  one  at  least  of 
them  had  always  lain.  They  met  and  took  delight, 
notwithstanding  their  exile,  in  some  of  the  most  in- 
teresting people  of  their  time  —  Ruskin,  Cardinal 
Manning,  and  Lord  Lytton.  Browning,  in  a  most 
characteristic  way,  enjoyed  the  society  of  all  of  them, 
arguing  with  one,  agreeing  with  another,  sitting  up 
all  night  by  the  bedside  of  a  third. 

It  has  frequently  been  stated  that  the  only  difference 
that  ever  separated  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning  was  upon 
the  question  of  spiritualism.  That  statement  must,  of 


92  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

course,  be  modified  and  even  contradicted  if  it  means 
that  they  never  differed;  that  Mr.  Browning  never 
thought  an  Act  of  Parliament  good  when  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing thought  it  bad  ;  that  Mr.  Browning  never  thought 
bread  stale  when  Mrs.  Browning  thought  it  new.  Such 
unanimity  is  not  only  inconceivable,  it  is  immoral;  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  abundant  evidence  that  their 
marriage  constituted  something  like  that  ideal  mar- 
riage, an  alliance  between  two  strong  and  independent 
forces.  They  differed,  in  truth,  about  a  great  many 
things,  for  example,  about  Napoleon  III.  whom  Mrs. 
Browning  regarded  with  an  admiration  which  would 
have  been  somewhat  beyond  the  deserts  of  Sir  Galahad, 
and  whom  Browning  with  his  emphatic  Liberal  princi- 
ples could  never  pardon  for  the  Coup  d'Etat.  If  they 
differed  on  spiritualism  in  a  somewhat  more  serious  way 
than  this,  the  reason  must  be  sought  in  qualities  which 
were  deeper  and  more  elemental  in  both  their  characters 
than  any  mere  matter  of  opinion.  Mrs.  Orr,  in  her 
excellent  Life  of  Browning,  states  that  the  difficulty 
arose  from  Mrs.  Browning's  firm  belief  in  psychical 
phenomena  and  Browning's  absolute  refusal  to  believe 
even  in  their  possibility.  Another  writer  who  met  them 
at  this  time  says,  "  Browning  cannot  believe,  and 
Mrs.  Browning  cannot  help  believing."  This  theory, 
that  Browning's  aversion  to  the  spiritualist  circle  arose 
from  an  absolute  denial  of  the  tenability  of  such  a 
theory  of  life  and  death,  has  in  fact  often  been  repeated. 
But  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  reconcile  it  with 
Browning's  character.  He  was  the  last  man  in  the  world 
to  be  intellectually  deaf  to  a  hypothesis  merely  because 
it  was  odd.  He  had  friends  whose  opinions  covered 
every  description  of  madness  from  the  French  legiti- 


iv. J  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  93 

mism  of  De  Ripert-Monclar  to  the  Republicanism  of 
Landor.  Intellectually  he  may  be  said  to  have  had  a 
zest  for  heresies.  It  is  difficult  to  impute  an  attitude 
of  mere  impenetrable  negation  to  a  man  who  had  ex- 
pressed -with  sympathy  the  religion  of  "  Caliban  "  and 
the  morality  of  "  Time's  Revenges."  It  is  true  that  at 
this  time  of  the  first  popular  interest  in  spiritualism  a 
feeling  existed  among  many  people  of  a  practical  turn 
of  mind,  which  can  only  be  called  a  superstition  against 
believing  in  ghosts.  But,  intellectually  speaking, 
Browning  would  probably  have  been  one  of  the  most 
tolerant  and  curious  in  regard  to  the  new  theories, 
whereas  the  popular  version  of  the  matter  makes  him 
unusually  intolerant  and  negligent  even  for  that  time. 
The  fact  was  in  all  probability  that  Browning's  aversion 
to  the  spiritualists  had  little  or  nothing  to  do  with 
spiritualism.  It  arose  from  quite  a  different  side  of  his 
character — his  uncompromising  dislike  of  what  is  called 
Bohemianism,  of  eccentric  or  slovenly  cliques,  of  those 
straggling  camp  followers  of  the  arts  who  exhibit  dubious 
manners  and  dubious  morals,  of  all  abnormality  and  of 
all  irresponsibility.  Any  one,  in  fact,  who  wishes  to  see 
what  it  was  that  Browning  disliked  need  only  do  two 
things.  First,  he  should  read  the  Memoirs  of  David 
Home,  the  famous  spiritualist  medium  with  whom 
Browning  came  in  contact.  These  Memoirs  constitute 
a  more  thorough  and  artistic  self-revelation  than  any 
monologue  that  Browning  ever  wrote.  The  ghosts,  the 
raps,  the  flying  hands,  the  phantom  voices  are  infinitely 
the  most  respectable  and  infinitely  the  most  credible  part 
of  the  narrative.  But  the  bragging,  the  sentimentalism, 
the  moral  and  intellectual  foppery  of  the  composition  is 
everywhere,  culminating  perhaps  in  the  disgusting  pas- 


94  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

sage  in  which  Home  describes  Mrs.  Browning  as  weep- 
ing over  him  and  assuring  him  that  all  her  husband's 
actions  in  the  matter  have  been  adopted  against  her 
will.  It  is  in  this  kind  of  thing  that  we  find  the  roots 
of  the  real  anger  of  Browning.  He  did  not  dislike 
spiritualism,  but  spiritualists.  The  second  point  on 
which  any  one  wishing  to  be  just  in  the  matter  should 
cast  an  eye,  is  the  record  of  the  visit  which  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing insisted  on  making  while  on  their  honeymoon  in 
Paris  to  the  house  of  George  Sand.  Browning  felt,  and 
to  some  extent  expressed,  exactly  the  same  aversion  to 
his  wife  mixing  with  the  circle  of  George  Sand  which 
he  afterwards  felt  at  her  mixing  with  the  circle  of  Home. 
The  society  was  "  of  the  ragged  red,  diluted  with  the 
low  theatrical,  men  who  "worship  George  Sand,  d  genou 
bas  between  an  oath  and  an  ejection  of  saliva."  When 
we  find  that  a  man  did  not  object  to  any  number  of 
Jacobites  or  Atheists,  but  objected  to  the  French 
Bohemian  poets  and  to  the  early  occultist  mediums  as 
friends  for  his  wife,  we  shall  surely  be  fairly  right  in 
concluding  that  he  objected  not  to  an  opinion,  but  to  a 
social  tone.  The  truth  was  that  Browning  had  a  great 
many  admirably  Philistine  feelings,  and  one  of  them 
was  a  great  relish  for  his  responsibilities  towards  his 
wife.  He  enjoyed  being  a  husband.  This  is  quite  a 
distinct  thing  from  enjoying  being  a  lover,  though  it 
will  scarcely  be  found  apart  from  it.  But,  like  all  good 
feelings,  it  has  its  possible  exaggerations,  and  one  of 
them  is  this  almost  morbid  healthiness  in  the  choice  of 
friends  for  his  wife. 

David  Home,  the  medium,  came  to  Florence  about 
1857.  Mrs.  Browning  undoubtedly  threw  herself  into 
psychical  experiments  with  great  ardour  at  first,  and 


iv.]  BROWNING  IN   ITALY  95 

Browning,  equally  undoubtedly,  opposed,  and  at  length 
forbade,  the  enterprise.  He  did  not  do  so  however 
until  he  had  attended  one  stance  at  least,  at  which  a 
somewhat  ridiculous  event  occurred,  which  is  described 
in  Home's  Memoirs  with  a  gravity  even  more  absurd 
than  the  incident.  Towards  the  end  of  the  proceedings 
a  wreath  was  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  table,  and  the 
lights  being  lowered,  it  was  caused  to  rise  slowly  into 
the  air,  and  after  hovering  for  some  time,  to  move 
towards  Mrs.  Browning,  and  at  length  to  alight  upon 
her  head.  As  the  wreath  was  floating  in  her  direction, 
her  husband  was  observed  abruptly  to  cross  the  room 
and  stand  beside  her.  One  would  think  it  was  a 
sufficiently  natural  action  on  the  part  of  a  man  whose 
wife  was  the  centre  of  a  weird  and  disturbing  experi- 
ment, genuine  or  otherwise.  But  Mr.  Home  gravely 
asserts  that  it  was  generally  believed  that  Browning 
had  crossed  the  room  in  the  hope  that  the  wreath 
would  alight  on  his  head,  and  that  from  the  hour  of 
its  disobliging  refusal  to  do  so  dated  the  whole  of  his 
goaded  and  malignant  aversion  to  spiritualism.  The 
idea  of  the  very  conventional  and  somewhat  bored 
Robert  Browning  running  about  the  room  after  a 
wreath  in  the  hope  of  putting  his  head  into  it,  is  one 
of  the  genuine  gleams  of  humour  in  this  rather  foolish 
affair.  Browning  could  be  fairly  violent,  as  we  know, 
both  in  poetry  and  conversation ;  but  it  would  be  almost 
too  terrible  to  conjecture  what  he  would  have  felt  and 
said  if  Mr.  Home's  wreath  had  alighted  on  his  head. 

Next  day,  according  to  Home's  account,  he  called  on 
the  hostess  of  the  previous  night  in  what  the  writer 
calls  "  a  ridiculous  state  of  excitement,"  and  told  her 
apparently  that  she  must  excuse  him  if  he  and  his  wife 


96  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

did  not  attend  any  more  gatherings  of  the  kind.  What 
actually  occurred  is  not,  of  course,  quite  easy  to  ascer- 
tain, for  the  account  in  Home's  Memoirs  principally 
consists  of  noble  speeches  made  by  the  medium  which 
would  seem  either  to  have  reduced  Browning  to  a 
pulverised  silence,  or  else  to  have  failed  to  attract  his 
attention.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  general 
upshot  of  the  affair  was  that  Browning  put  his  foot 
down,  and  the  experiments  ceased.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  he  was  justified  in  this ;  indeed,  he  was 
probably  even  more  justified  if  the  experiments  were 
genuine  psychical  mysteries  than  if  they  were  the 
hocus-pocus  of  a  charlatan.  He  knew  his  wife  better 
than  posterity  can  be  expected  to  do ;  but  even  pos- 
terity can  see  that  she  was  the  type  of  woman  so  much 
adapted  to  the  purposes  of  men  like  Home  as  to 
exhibit  almost  invariably  either  a  great  craving  for 
such  experiences  or  a  great  terror  of  them.  Like 
many  geniuses,  but  not  all,  she  lived  naturally  upon 
something  like  a  borderland ;  and  it  is  impossible  to 
say  that  if  Browning  had  not  interposed  when  she 
was  becoming  hysterical  she  might  not  have  ended 
in  an  asylum. 

The  whole  of  this  incident  is  very  characteristic  of 
Browning;  but  the  real  characteristic  note  in  it  has,  as 
above  suggested,  been  to  some  extent  missed.  When 
some  seven  years  afterwards  he  produced  "  Mr.  Sludge 
the  Medium,"  every  one  supposed  that  it  was  an 
attack  upon  spiritualism  and  the  possibility  of  its 
phenomena.  As  we  shall  see  when  we  come  to  that 
poem,  this  is  a  wholly  mistaken  interpretation  of  it. 
But  what  is  really  curious  is  that  most  people  have 
assumed  that  a  dislike  of  Home's  investigations  implies 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  97 

a  theoretic  disbelief  in  spiritualism.  It  might,  of 
course,  imply  a  very  firm  and  serious  belief  in  it.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  it  did  not  imply  this  in  Browning, 
but  it  may  perfectly  well  have  implied  an  agnosticism 
which  admitted  the  reasonableness  of  such  things. 
Home  was  infinitely  less  dangerous  as  a  dexterous 
swindler  than  he  was  as  a  bad  or  foolish  man  in  pos- 
session of  unknown  or  ill-comprehended  powers.  It  is 
surely  curious  to  think  that  a  man  must  object  to 
exposing  his  wife  to  a  few  conjuring  tricks,  but  could 
not  be  afraid  of  exposing  her  to  the  loose  and  name- 
less energies  of  the  universe. 

Browning's  theoretic  attitude  in  the  matter  was, 
therefore,  in  all  probability  quite  open  and  unbiassed. 
His  was  a  peculiarly  hospitable  intellect.  If  any  one 
had  told  him  of  the  spiritualist  theory,  or  theories  a 
hundred  times  more  insane,  as  things  held  by  some 
sect  of  Gnostics  in  Alexandria,  or  of  heretical  Tal- 
nradists  at  Antwerp,  he  would  have  delighted  in  those 
theories,  and  would  very  likely  have  adopted  them.  But 
Greek  Gnostics  and  Antwerp  Jews  do  not  dance  round 
a  man's  wife  and  wave  their  hands  in  her  face  and  send 
her  into  swoons  and  trances  about  which  nobody  knows 
anything  rational  or  scientific.  It  was  simply  the 
stirring  in  Browning  of  certain  primal  masculine  feel- 
ings far  beyond  the  reach  of  argument  —  things  that 
lie  so  deep  that  if  they  are  hurt,  though  there  may 
be  no  blame  and  no  anger,  there  is  always  pain. 
Browning  did  riot  like  spiritualism  to  be  mentioned 
for  many  years. 

Robert  Browning  was  unquestionably  a  thoroughly 
conventional  man.  There  are  many  who  think  this 
element  of  conventionality  altogether  regrettable  and 


98  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

disgraceful ;  they  have  established,  as  it  were,  a  con- 
vention of  the  unconventional.  But  this  hatred  of  the 
conventional  element  in  the  personality  of  a  poet  is 
only  possible  to  those  who  do  not  remember  the 
meaning  of  words.  Convention  means  only  a  coming 
together,  an  agreement ;  and  as  every  poet  must  base 
his  work  upon  an  emotional  agreement  among  men,  so 
every  poet  must  base  his  work  upon  a  convention. 
Every  art  is,  of  course,  based  upon  a  convention,  an 
agreement  between  the  speaker  and  the  listener  that 
certain  objections  shall  not  be  raised.  The  most 
realistic  art  in  the  world  is  open  to  realistic  objection. 
Against  the  most  exact  and  everyday  drama  that 
ever  came  out  of  Norway  it  is  still  possible  for  the 
realist  to  raise  the  objection  that  the  hero  who  starts 
a  subject  and  drops  it,  who  runs  out  of  a  room  and 
runs  back  again  for  his  hat,  is  all  the  time  behaving 
in  a  most  eccentric  manner,  considering  that  he  is 
doing  these  things  in  a  room  in  which  one  of  the  four 
walls  has  been  taken  clean  away  and  been  replaced  by 
a  line  of  footlights  and  a  mob  of  strangers.  Against 
the  most  accurate  black-and-white  artist  that  human 
imagination  can  conceive  it  is  still  to  be  admitted  that 
he  draws  a  black  line  round  a  man's  nose,  and  that 
that  line  is  a  lie.  And  in  precisely  the  same  fashion 
a  poet  must,  by  the  nature,  of  things,  be  conventional. 
Unless  he  is  describing  an  emotion  which  others  share 
with  him,  his  labours  will  be  utterly  in  vain.  If  a 
poet  really  had  an  original  emotion ;  if,  for  example, 
a  poet  suddenly  fell  in  love  with  the  buffers  of  a  rail- 
way train,  it  would  take  him  considerably  more  time 
than  his  allotted  three-score  years  and  ten  to  commu- 
nicate his  feelings. 


iv.]  BROWNING   IN   ITALY  99 

Poetry  deals  with  primal  and  conventional  things  — 
the  hunger  for  bread,  the  love  of  woman,  the  love  of 
children,  the  desire  for  immortal  life.  If  men  really 
had  new  sentiments,  poetry  could  not  deal  with  them. 
If,  let  us  say,  a  man  did  not  feel  a  bitter  craving  to 
eat  bread ;  but  did,  by  way  of  substitute,  feel  a  fresh, 
original  craving  to  eat  brass  fenders  or  mahogany 
tables,  poetry  could  not  express  him.  If  a  man,  in- 
stead of  falling  in  love  with  a  woman,  fell  in  love  with 
a  fossil  or  a  sea-anemone,  poetry  could  not  express 
him.  Poetry  can  only  express  what  is  original  in  one 
sense  —  the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  original  sin. 
It  is  original,  not  in  the  paltry  sense  of  being  new, 
but  in  the  deeper  sense  of  being  old ;  it  is  original  in 
the  sense  that  it  deals  with  origins. 

All  artists,  who  have  any  experience  of  the  arts,  will 
agree  so  far,  that  a  poet  is  bound  to  be  conventional 
with  regard  to  matters  of  art.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, they  are  the  very  people  who  cannot,  as  a  general 
rule,  see  that  a  poet  is  also  bound  to  be  conventional 
in  matters  of  conduct.  It  is  only  the  smaller  poet  who 
sees  the  poetry  of  revolt,  of  isolation,  of  disagreement; 
the  larger  poet  sees  the  poetry  of  those  great  agree- 
ments which  constitute  the  romantic  achievement  of 
civilisation.  Just  as  an  agreement  between  the  drama- 
tist and  the  audience  is  necessary  to  every  play ;  just 
as  an  agreement  between  the  painter  and  the  specta- 
tors is  necessary  to  every  picture,  so  an  agreement  is 
necessary  to  produce  the  worship  of  any  of  the  great 
figures  of  morality  —  the  hero,  the  saint,  the  average 
man,  the  gentleman.  Browning  had,  it  must  thor- 
oughly be  realised,  a  real  pleasure  in  these  great  agree- 
ments, these  great  conventions.  He  delighted,  with  a 


100  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

true  poetic  delight,  in  being  conventional.  Being  by 
birth  an  Englishman,  he  took  pleasure  in  being  an 
Englishman ;  being  by  rank  a  member  of  the  middle 
class,  he  took  a  pride  in  its  ancient  scruples  and  its 
everlasting  boundaries.  He  was  everything  that  he 
was  with  a  definite  and  conscious  pleasure  —  a  man, 
a  Liberal,  an  Englishman,  an  author,  a  gentleman,  a" 
lover,  a  married  man. 

This  must  always  be  remembered  as  a  general  charac- 
teristic of  Browning,  this  ardent  and  headlong  conven- 
tionality. He  exhibited  it  pre-eminently  in  the  affair 
of  his  elopement  and  marriage,  during  and  after  the 
escape  of  himself  and  his  wife  to  Italy.  He  seems  to 
have  forgotten  everything,  except  the  splendid  worry 
of  being  married.  He  showed  a  thoroughly  healthy 
consciousness  that  he  was  taking  up  a  responsibility 
which  had  its  practical  side.  He  came  finally  and  en- 
tirely out  of  his  dreams.  Since  he  had  himself  enough 
money  to  live  on,  he  had  never  thought  of  himself  as 
doing  anything  but  writing  poetry  ;  poetry  indeed  was 
probably  simmering  and  bubbling  in  his  head  day  and 
night.  But  when  the  problem  of  the  elopement  arose 
he  threw  himself  with  an  energy,  of  which  it  is  pleas- 
ant to  read,  into  every  kind  of  scheme  for  solidifying 
his  position.  He  wrote  to  Monckton  Milnes,  and  would 
appear  to  have  badgered  him  with  applications  for  a 
post  in  the  British  Museum.  "  I  will  work  like  a 
horse,"  he  said,  with  that  boyish  note,  which,  when- 
ever in  his  unconsciousness  he  strikes  it,  is  more  poet- 
ical than  all  his  poems.  All  his  language  in  this  matter 
is  emphatic ;  he  would  be  "  glad  and  proud,"  he  says, 
"  to  have  any  minor  post "  his  friend  could  obtain  for 
him.  He  offered  to  read  for  the  Bar,  and  probably  be- 


iv.]  BROWNING  IN   ITALY  101 

gan  doing  so.  But  all  this  vigorous  and  very  creditable 
materialism  was  ruthlessly  extinguished  by  Elizabeth 
Barrett.  She  declined  altogether  even  to  entertain  the 
idea  of  her  husband  devoting  himself  to  anything  else 
at  the  expense  of  poetry.  Probably  she  was  right  and 
Browning  wrong,  but  it  was  an  error  which  every  man 
would  desire  to  have  made. 

One  of  the  qualities  again  which  make  Browning 
most  charming,  is  the  fact  that  he  felt  and  expressed  so 
simple  and  genuine  a  satisfaction  about  his  own  achieve- 
ments as  a  lover  and  husband,  particularly  in  relation 
to  his  triumph  in  the  hygienic  care  of  his  wife.  "  If  he 
is  vain  of  anything,"  writes  Mrs.  Browning,  "  it  is  of 
my  restored  health."  Later,  she  adds  with  admirable 
humour  and  suggestiveness,  "  and  I  have  to  tell  him 
that  he  really  must  not  go  telling  everybody  how  his 
wife  walked  here  with  him,  or  walked  there  with  him, 
as  if  a  wife  with  two  feet  were  a  miracle  in  Nature." 
When  a  lady  in  Italy  said,  on  an  occasion  when  Brown- 
ing stayed  behind  with  his  wife  on  the  day  of  a  picnic, 
that  he  was  "the  only  man  who  behaved  like  a  Christian 
to  his  wife,"  Browning  was  elated  to  an  almost  infantile 
degree.  But  there  could  scarcely  be  a  better  test  of 
the  essential  manliness  and  decency  of  a  man  than 
this  test  of  his  vanities.  Browning  boasted  of  being 
domesticated ;  there  are  half  a  hundred  men  every- 
where who  would  be  inclined  to  boast  of  not  being 
domesticated.  Bad  men  are  almost  without  exception 
conceited,  but  they  are  commonly  conceited  of  their 
defects. 

One  picturesque  figure  who  plays  a  part  in  this 
portion  of  the  Brownings'  life  in  Italy  is  Walter  Savage 
Landor.  Browning  found  him  living  with  some  of  his 


102  EGBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

wife's  relations,  and  engaged  in  a  continuous  and  furious 
quarrel  with  them,  which  was,  indeed,  not  uncommonly 
the  condition  of  that  remarkable  man  when  living  with 
other  human  beings.  He  had  the  double  arrogance 
which  is  only  possible  to  that  old  and  stately,  but 
almost  extinct  blend — the  aristocratic  republican. 
Like  an  old  Roman  senator,  or  like  a  gentleman  of  the 
Southern  States  of  America,  he  had  the  condescension 
of  a  gentleman  to  those  below  him,  combined  with  the 
jealous  self-assertiveness  of  a  Jacobin  to  those  above. 
The  only  person  who  appears  to  have  been  able  to 
manage  him  and  bring  out  his  more  agreeable  side  was 
Browning.  It  is,  by  the  way,  one  of  the  many  hints 
of  a  certain  element  in  Browning  which  can  only  be 
described  by  the  elementary  and  old-fashioned  word 
goodness,  that  he  always  contrived  to  make  himself 
acceptable  and  even  lovable  to  men  of  savage  and 
capricious  temperament,  of  detached  and  erratic  genius, 
who  could  get  on  with  no  one  else.  Carlyle,  who  could 
not  get  a  bitter  taste  off  his  tongue  in  talking  of  most 
of  his  contemporaries,  was  fond  of  Browning.  Landor, 
who  could  hardly  conduct  an  ordinary  business  inter- 
view without  beginning  to  break  the  furniture,  was 
fond  of  Browning.  These  are  things  which  speak  more 
for  a  man  than  many  people  will  understand.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  be  agreeable  to  a  circle  of  admirers, 
especially  feminine  admirers,  who  have  a  peculiar  talent 
for  discipleship  and  the  absorption  of  ideas.  But  when 
a  man  is  loved  by  other  men  of  his  own  intellectual 
stature  and  of  a  wholly  different  type  and  order  of 
eminence,  we  may  be  certain  that  there  was  something 
genuine  about  him,  and  something  far  more  important 
than  anything  intellectual.  Men  do  not  like  another 


iv.]  BROWNING  IN  ITALY  103 

man  because  he  is  a  genius,  least  of  all  when  they 
happen  to  be  geniuses  themselves.  This  general  truth 
about  Browning  is  like  hearing  of  a  woman  who  is  the 
most  famous  beauty  in  a  city,  and  who  is  at  the  same 
time  adored  and  confided  in  by  all  the  women  who  live 
there. 

Browning  came  to  the  rescue  of  the  fiery  old  gen- 
tleman, and  helped  by  Seymour  Kirkup  put  him 
under  very  definite  obligations  by  a  course  of  very 
generous  conduct.  He  was  fully  repaid  in  his  own 
mind  for  his  trouble  by  the  mere  presence  and  friend- 
ship of  Landor,  for  whose  quaint  and  volcanic  person- 
ality he  had  a  vast  admiration,  compounded  of  the 
pleasure  of  the  artist  in  an  oddity  and  of  tne  man  in  a 
hero.  It  is  somewhat  amusing  and  characteristic  that 
Mrs.  Browning  did  not  share  this  unlimited  enjoyment 
of  the  company  of  Mr.  Landor,  and  expressed  her  feel- 
ings in  her  own  humorous  manner.  She  writes,  "  Dear, 
darling  Robert  amuses  me  by  talking  of  his  gentleness 
and  sweetness.  A  most  courteous  and  refined  gentle- 
man he  is,  of  course,  and  very  affectionate  to  Robert  (as 
he  ought  to  be),  but  of  self-restraint  he  has  not  a  grain, 
and  of  suspicion  many  grains.  What  do  you  really  say 
to  dashing  down  a  plate  on  the  floor  when  you  don't 
like  what's  on  it  ?  Robert  succeeded  in  soothing  him, 
and  the  poor  old  lion  is  very  quiet  on  the  whole,  roar- 
ing softly  to  beguile  the  time  in  Latin  alcaics  against 
his  wife  and  Louis  Napoleon." 

One  event  alone  could  really  end  this  endless  life  of 
the  Italian  Arcadia.  That  event  happened  on  June  29, 
1861.  Robert  Browning's  wife  died,  stricken  by  the 
death  of  her  sister,  and  almost  as  hard  (it  is  a  charac- 
teristic touch)  by  the  death  of  Cavour.  She  died  alone 


104  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP.  iv. 

in  the  room  with  Browning,  and  of  what  passed  then, 
though  much  has  been  said,  little  should  be.  He, 
closing  the  door  of  that  room  behind  him,  closed  a  door 
in  himself,  and  none  ever  saw  Browning  upon  earth 
again  but  only  a  splendid  surface. 


CHAPTER  V 

BROWNING   IN    LATER   LIFE 

BROWNING'S  confidences,  what  there  were  of  them, 
immediately  after  his  wife's  death,  were  given  to  several 
women-friends  ;  all  his  life,  indeed,  he  was  chiefly  in- 
timate with  women.  The  two  most  intimate  of  these 
were  his  own  sister,  who  remained  with  him  in  all  his 
later  years,  and  the  sister  of  his  wife,  who  seven  years 
afterwards  passed  away  in  his  presence  as  Elizabeth 
had  done.  The  other  letters,  which  number  only  one 
or  two,  referring  in  any  personal  manner  to  his  bereave- 
ment, are  addressed  to  Miss  Haworth  and  Isa  Blagden. 
He  left  Florence  and  remained  for  a  time  with  his 
father  and  sister  near  Dinard.  Then  he  returned  to 
London  and  took  up  his  residence  in  Warwick  Crescent. 
Naturally  enough,  the  thing  for  which  he  now  chiefly 
lived  was  the  education  of  his  son,  and  it  is  charac- 
teristic of  Browning  that  he  was  not  only  a  very 
indulgent  father,  but  an  indulgent  father  of  a  very 
conventional  type :  he  had  rather  the  chuckling  pride 
of  the  city  gentleman  than  the  educational  gravity  of 
the  intellectual. 

Browning  was  now  famous.  "  Bells  and  Pome- 
granates," "  Men  and  Women,"  "  Christmas  Eve,"  and 
"Dramatis  Personse"  had  successively  glorified  his 
Italian  period.  But  he  was  already  brooding  half- 

105 


106  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

unconsciously  on  more  famous  things.  He  has  him- 
self left  on  record  a  description  of  the  incident  out  of 
which  grew  the  whole  impulse  and  plan  of  his  greatest 
achievement.  In  a  passage  marked  with  all  his  peculiar 
sense  of  material  things,  all  that  power  of  writing 
of  stone  or  metal  or  the  fabric  of  drapery,  so  that  we 
seem  to  be  handling  and  smelling  them,  he  has  de- 
scribed a  stall  for  the  selling  of  odds  and  ends  of 
every  variety  of  utility  and  uselessness :  — 

"picture  frames 

White  through  the  worn  gilt,  mirror-sconces  chipped, 
Bronze  angel-heads  once  knobs  attached  to  chests, 
(Handled  when  ancient  dames  chose  forth  brocade) 
Modern  chalk  drawings,  studies  from  the  nude, 
Samples  of  stone,  jet,  breccia,  porphyry 
Polished  and  rough,  sundry  amazing  busts 
In  baked  earth,  (broken,  Providence  be  praised  !) 
A  wreck  of  tapestry  proudly-purposed  web, 
When  reds  and  blues  were  indeed  red  and  blue, 
Now  offer'd  as  a  mat  to  save  bare  feet 
(Since  carpets  constitute  a  cruel  cost). 

****** 
Vulgarized  Horace  for  the  use  of  schools, 
'  The  Life,  Death,  Miracles  of  Saint  Somebody, 
Saint  Somebody  Else,  his  Miracles,  Death,  and  Life '  — 
With  this  one  glance  at  the  lettered  back  of  which, 
And  '  Stall,'  cried  I ;  a  lira  made  it  mine." 

This  sketch  embodies  indeed  the  very  poetry  of 
debris,  and  comes  nearer  than  any  other  poem  has  done 
to  expressing  the  pathos  and  picturesqueness  of  a  low- 
class  pawnshop.  "  This,"  which  Browning  bought  for 
a  lira  out  of  this  heap  of  rubbish,  was,  of  course,  the 
old  Latin  record  of  the  criminal  case  of  Guido 
Frauceschini,  tried  for  the  murder  of  his  wife  Pom- 


v.]  BROWNING   IN   LATER   LIFE  107 

pilia  in  the  year  1698.  And  this  again,  it  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  say,  was  the  ground-plan  and  motive  of 
The  Ring  and  the  Book. 

Browning  had  picked  up  the  volume  and  partly 
planned  the  poem  during  his  wife's  lifetime  in  Italy. 
But  the  more  he  studied  it,  the  more  the  dimensions 
of  the  theme  appeared  to  widen  and  deepen ;  and  he 
came  at  last,  there  can  be  little  doubt,  to  regard  it 
definitely  as  his  magnum  opus  to  which  he  would  devote 
many  years  to  come.  Then  came  the  great  sorrow  of 
his  life,  and  he  cast  about  him  for  something  suffi- 
ciently immense  and  arduous  and  complicated  to  keep 
his  brain  going  like  some  huge  and  automatic  engine. 
"I  mean  to  keep  writing,"  he  said,  "whether  I  like  it 
or  not."  And  thus  finally  he  took  up  the  scheme  of 
the  Franceschini  story,  and  developed  it  on  a  scale 
with  a  degree  of  elaboration,  repetition,  and  manage- 
ment, and  inexhaustible  scholarship  which  was  never 
perhaps  before  given  in  the  history  of  the  world  to  an 
affair  of  two  or  three  characters.  Of  the  larger  literary 
and  spiritual  significance  of  the  work,  particularly  in 
reference  to  its  curious  and  original  form  of  narration, 
I  shall  speak  subsequently.  But  there  is  one  pecu- 
liarity about  the  story  which  has  more  direct  bearing 
on  Browning's  life,  and  it  appears  singular  that  few, 
if  any,  of  his  critics  have  noticed  it.  This  peculiarity 
is  the  extraordinary  resemblance  between  the  moral 
problem  involved  in  the  poem  if  understood  in  its 
essence,  and  the  moral  problem  which  constituted  the 
crisis  and  centre  of  Browning's  own  life.  Nothing, 
properly  speaking,  ever  happened  to  Browning  after 
his  wife's  death ;  and  his  greatest  work  during  that 
time  was  the  telling,  under  alien  symbols  and  the  veil 


108  EGBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

of  a  wholly  different  story,  the  inner  truth  about  his 
own  greatest  trial  and  hesitation.  He  himself  had  in 
this  sense  the  same  difficulty  as  Caponsacchi,  the 
supreme  difficulty  of  having  to  trust  himself  to  the 
reality  of  virtue  not  only  without  the  reward,  but 
even  without  the  name  of  virtue.  He  had,  like 
Caponsacchi,  preferred  what  was  unselfish  and  dubious 
to  what  was  selfish  and  honourable.  He  knew  better 
than  any  man  that  there  is  little  danger  of  men  who 
really  know  anything  of  that  naked  and  homeless 
responsibility  seeking  it  too  often  or  indulging  it  too 
much.  The  conscientiousness  of  the  law-abider  is 
nothing  in  its  terrors  to  the  conscientiousness  of  the 
conscientious  law-breaker.  Browning  had  once,  for 
what  he  seriously  believed  to  be  a  greater  good,  done 
what  he  himself  would  never  have  had  the  cant  to  deny, 
ought  to  be  called  deceit  and  evasion.  Such  a  thing 
ought  never  to  come  to  a  man  twice.  If  he  finds  that 
necessity  twice,  he  may,  I  think,  be  looked  at  with  the 
beginning  of  a  suspicion.  To  Browning  it  came  once, 
and  he  devoted  his  greatest  poem  to  a  suggestion  of 
how  such  a  necessity  may  come  to  any  man  who  is 
worthy  to  live. 

As  has  already  been  suggested,  any  apparent  danger 
that  there  may  be  in  this  excusing  of  an  exceptional 
act  is  counteracted  by  the  perils  of  the  act,  since  it 
must  always  be  remembered  that  this  kind  of  act  has 
the  immense  difference  from  all  legal  acts  —  that  it  can 
only  be  justified  by  success.  If  Browning  had  taken 
his  wife  to  Paris,  and  she  had  died  in  an  hotel  there,  we 
can  only  conceive  him  saying,  with  the  bitter  emphasis 
of  one  of  his  own  lines,  "  How  should  I  have  borne  me, 
please  ?  "  Before  and  after  this  event  his  life  was  as 


v.]  BROWNING   IN   LATER   LIFE  109 

tranquil  and  casual  a  one  as  it  would  be  easy  to 
imagine;  but  there  always  remained  upon  him  some- 
thing which  was  felt  by  all  who  knew  him  in  after 
years — the  spirit  of  a  man  who  had  been  ready  when 
his  time  came,  and  had  walked  in  his  own  devotion 
and  certainty  in  a  position  counted  indefensible  and 
almost  along  the  brink  of  murder.  This  great  moral 
of  Browning,  which  may  be  called  roughly  the  doctrine 
of  the  great  hour,  enters,  of  course,  into  many  poems 
besides  TJie  Ring  and  the  Book,  and  is  indeed  the  main- 
spring of  a  great  part  of  his  poetry  taken  as  a  whole. 
It  is,  of  course,  the  central  idea  of  that  fine  poem,  "  The 
Statue  and  the  Bust,"  which  has  given  a  great  deal  of 
distress  to  a  great  many  people  because  of  its  supposed 
invasion  of  recognised  morality.  It  deals,  as  every  one 
knows,  with  a  Duke  Ferdinand  and  an  elopement  which 
he  planned  with  the  bride  of  one  of  the  Kiccardi.  The 
lovers  begin  by  deferring  their  flight  for  various  more 
or  less  comprehensible  reasons  of  convenience ;  but  the 
habit  of  shrinking  from  the  final  step  grows  steadily 
upon  them,  and  they  never  take  it,  but  die,  as  it  were, 
waiting  for  each  other.  The  objection  that  the  act 
thus  avoided  was  a  criminal  one  is  very  simply  and 
quite  clearly  answered  by  Browning  himself.  His 
case  against  the  dilatory  couple  is  not  in  the  least 
affected  by  the  viciousness  of  their  aim.  His  case  is 
that  they  exhibited  no  virtue.  Crime  was  frustrated 
in  them  by  cowardice,  which  is  probably  the  worse 
immorality  of  the  two.  The  same  idea  again  may  be 
found  in  that  delightful  lyric  "  Youth  and  Art,"  where 
a  successful  cantatrice  reproaches  a  successful  sculptor 
with  their  failure  to  understand  each  other  in  their 
youth  and  poverty. 


110  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

"Each  life  unfulfilled,  you  see  ; 
It  hangs  still,  patchy  and  scrappy  : 
We  have  not  sighed  deep,  laughed  free, 
Starved,  feasted,  despaired,  — been  happy." 

And  this  conception  of  the  great  hour  which  breaks  out 
everywhere  in  Browning  it  is  almost  impossible  not 
to  connect  with  his  own  internal  drama.  It  is  really 
curious  that  this  correspondence  has  not  been  insisted 
on.  Probably  critics  have  been  misled  by  the  fact  that 
Browning  in  many  places  appears  to  boast  that  he  is 
purely  dramatic,  that  he  has  never  put  himself  into  his 
work,  a  thing  which  no  poet,  good  or  bad,  who  ever 
lived  could  possibly  avoid  doing. 

The  enormous  scope  and  seriousness  of  The  Ring  and 
the.  Book  occupied  Browning  for  some  five  or  six  years, 
and  the  great  epic  appeared  in  the  winter  of  1868. 
Just  before  it  was  published  Smith  and  Elder  brought 
out  a  uniform  edition  of  all  Browning's  works  up  to 
that  time,  and  the  two  incidents  taken  together  may  be 
considered  to  mark  the  final  and  somewhat  belated 
culmination  of  Browning's  literary  fame.  The  years 
since  his  wife's  death,  that  had  been  covered  by  the 
writing  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  had  been  years  of  an 
almost  feverish  activity  in  that  and  many  other  ways. 
His  travels  had  been  restless  and  continued,  his  industry 
immense,  and  for  the  first  time  he  began  that  mode  of 
life  which  afterwards  became  so  characteristic  of  him  — 
the  life  of  what  is  called  society.  A  man  of  a  shallower 
and  more  sentimental  type  would  have  professed  to 
find  the  life  of  dinner-tables  and  soirees  vain  and  un- 
satisfying to  a  poet,  and  especially  to  a  poet  in  mourn- 
ing. But  if  there  is  one  thing  more  than  another 
which  is  stirring  and  honourable  about  Browning,  it  is 


v.j  BEOWNING   IN  LATER   LIFE  111 

the  entire  absence  in  him  of  this  cant  of  dissatisfaction. 
He  had  the  one  great  requirement  of  a  poet  —  he  was 
not  difficult  to  please.  The  life  of  society  was  super- 
ficial, but  it  is  only  very  superficial  people  who  object 
to  the  superficial.  To  the  man  who  sees  the  marvel- 
lousness  of  all  things,  the  surface  of  life  is  fully  as 
strange  and  magical  as  its  interior ;  clearness  and 
plainness  of  life  is  fully  as  mysterious  as  its  mysteries. 
The  young  man  in  evening  dress,  pulling  on  his  gloves, 
is  quite  as  elemental  a  figure  as  any  anchorite,  quite  as 
incomprehensible,  and  indeed  quite  as  alarming. 

A  great  many  literary  persons  have  expressed 
astonishment  at,  or  even  disapproval  of,  this  social 
frivolity  of  Browning's.  Not  one  of  these  literary 
people  would  have  been  shocked  if  Browning's  in- 
terest in  humanity  had  led  him  into  a  gambling  hell 
in  the  Wild  West  or  a  low  tavern  in  Paris ;  but  it 
seems  to  be  tacitly  assumed  that  fashionable  people  are 
not  human  at  all.  Humanitarians  of  a  material  and 
dogmatic  type,  the  philanthropists  and  the  professional 
reformers  go  to  look  for  humanity  in  remote  places 
and  in  huge  statistics.  Humanitarians  of  a  more  vivid 
type,  the  Bohemian  artists,  go  to  look  for  humanity  in 
thieves'  kitchens  and  the  studios  of  the  Quartier  Latin. 
But  humanitarians  of  the  highest  type,  the  great  poets 
and  philosophers,  do  not  go  to  look  for  humanity  at 
all.  For  them  alone  among  all  men  the  nearest 
drawing-room  is  full  of  humanity,  and  even  their  own 
families  are  human.  Shakespeare  ended  his  life  by 
buying  a  house  in  his  own  native  town  and  talking  to 
the  townsmen.  Browning  was  invited  to  a  great  many 
conversaziones  and  private  views,  and  did  not  pretend 
that  they  bored  him.  In  a  letter  belonging  to  this 


112  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

period  of  his  life  he  describes  his  first  dinner  at  one 
of  the  Oxford  colleges  with  an  unaffected  delight  and 
vanity,  which  reminds  the  reader  of  nothing  so  much 
as  the  pride  of  the  boy-captain  of  a  public  school  if  he 
were  invited  to  a  similar  function  and  received  a  few 
compliments.  It  may  be  indeed  that  Browning  had  a 
kind  of  second  youth  in  this  long-delayed  social  recog- 
nition, but  at  least  he  enjoyed  his  second  youth  nearly 
as  much  as  his  first,  and  it  is  not  every  one  who  can 
do  that. 

Of  Browning's  actual  personality  and  presence  in 
this  later  middle  age  of  his,  memories  are  still  suffi- 
ciently clear.  He  was  a  middle-sized,  well  set  up,  erect 
man,  with  somewhat  emphatic  gestures,  and,  as  almost 
all  testimonies  mention,  a  curiously  strident  voice. 
The  beard,  the  removal  of  which  his  wife  had  resented 
with  so  quaint  an  indignation,  had  grown  again,  but 
grown  quite  white,  which,  as  she  said  when  it  occurred, 
was  a  signal  mark  of  the  justice  of  the  gods.  His  hair 
was  still  fairly  dark,  and  his  whole  appearance  at  this 
time  must  have  been  very  well  represented  by  Mr. 
G.  F.  Watts'  fine  portrait  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery.  The  portrait  bears  one  of  the  many  testimo- 
nies which  exist  to  Mr.  Watts'  grasp  of  the  essential 
of  character,  for  it  is  the  only  one  of  the  portraits  of 
Browning  in  which  we  get  primarily  the  air  of  virility, 
even  of  animal  virility,  tempered  but  not  disguised, 
with  a  certain  touch  of  the  pallor  of  the  brain-worker. 
He  looks  here  what  he  was  —  a  very  healthy  man,  too 
scholarly  to  live  a  completely  healthy  life. 

His  manner  in  society,  as  has  been  more  than  once 
indicated,  was  that  of  a  man  anxious  if  anything,  to 
avoid  the  air  of  intellectual  eminence.  Lockhart  said 


v.]  BROWNING   IN  LATER   LIFE  113 

briefly,  "  I  like  Browning ;  he  isn't  at  all  like  a  damned 
literary  man."  He  was,  according  to  some,  upon 
occasion,  talkative  and  noisy  to  a  fault;  but  there 
are  two  kinds  of  men  who  monopolise  conversation. 
The  first  kind  are  those  who  like  the  sound  of  their 
own  voice;  the  second  are  those  who  do  not  know 
what  the  sound  of  their  own  voice  is  like.  Browning 
was  one  of  the  latter  class.  His  volubility  in  speech 
had  the  same  origin  as  his  voluminousness  and  ob- 
scurity in  literature  —  a  kind  of  headlong  humility. 
He  cannot  assuredly  have  been  aware  that  he  talked 
people  down  or  have  wished  to  do  so.  For  this  would 
have  been  precisely  a  violation  of  the  ideal  of  the  man 
of  the  world,  the  one  ambition  and  even  weakness  that 
he  had.  He  wished  to  be  a  man  of  the  world,  and  he 
never  in  the  full  sense  was  one.  He  remained  a  little 
too  much  of  a  boy,  a  little  too  much  even  of  a  Puritan, 
and  a  little  too  much  of  what  may  be  called  a  man  of 
the  universe,  to  be  a  man  of  the  world. 

One  of  his  faults  probably  was  the  thing  roughly 
called  prejudice.  On  the  question,  for  example,  of 
table-turning  and  psychic  phenomena  he  was  in  a 
certain  degree  fierce  and  irrational.  He  was  not 
indeed,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  come  to  study 
"  Sludge  the  Medium,"  exactly  prejudiced  against 
spiritualism.  But  he  was  beyond  all  question  stub- 
bornly prejudiced  against  spiritualists.  Whether  the 
medium  Home  was  or  was  not  a  scoundrel  it  is  some- 
what difficult  in  our  day  to  conjecture.  But  in  so  far 
as  he  claimed  supernatural  powers,  he  may  have  been 
as  honest  a  gentleman  as  ever  lived.  And  even  if  we 
think  that  the  moral  atmosphere  of  Home  is  that  of 
a  man  of  dubious  character,  we  can  still  feel  that 


114  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

Browning  might  have  achieved  his  purpose  without 
making  it  so  obvious  that  he  thought  so.  Some  traces 
again,  though  much  fainter  ones,  may  be  found  of 
something  like  a  subconscious  hostility  to  the  Roman 
Church,  or  at  least  a  less  full  comprehension  of  the 
grandeur  of  the  Latin  religious  civilisation  than  might 
have  been  expected  of  a  man  of  Browning's  great  imag- 
inative tolerance.  ^Estheticism,  Bohemianisin,  the  ir- 
responsibilities of  the  artist,  the  untidy  morals  of  Grub 
Street  and  the  Latin  Quarter,  he  hated  with  a  consuming 
hatred.  He  was  himself  exact  in  everything,  from  his 
scholarship  to  his  clothes ;  and  even  when  he  wore  the 
loose  white  garments  of  the  lounger  in  Southern  Eu- 
rope, they  were  in  their  own  way  as  precise  as  a  dress 
suit.  This  extra  carefulness  in  all  things  he  defended 
against  the  cant  of  Bohemianism  as  the  right  attitude 
for  the  poet.  When  some  one  excused  coarseness  or 
negligence  on  the  ground  of  genius,  he  said,  "  That  is 
an  error :  Noblesse  oblige." 

Browning's  prejudices,  however,  belonged  altogether 
to  that  healthy  order  which  is  characterised  by  a 
cheerful  and  satisfied  ignorance.  It  never  does  a  man 
any  very  great  harm  to  hate  a  thing  that  he  knows 
nothing  about.  It  is  the  hating  of  a  thing  when  we 
do  know  something  about  it  which  corrodes  the  char- 
acter. We  all  have  a  dark  feeling  of  resistance  towards 
people  we  have  never  met,  and  a  profound  and  manly 
dislike  of  the  authors  we  have  never  read.  It  does 
not  harm  a  man  to  be  certain  before  opening  the  books 
that  Whitman  is  an  obscene  ranter  or  that  Stevenson 
is  a  mere  trifler  with  style.  It  is  the  man  who  can 
think  these  things  after  he  has  read  the  books  who 
must  be  in  a  fair  way  to  mental  perdition.  Prejudice, 


v.]  BROWNING   IN  LATER   LIFE  115 

in  fact,  is  not  so  much  the  great  intellectual  sin  as  a 
thing  which  we  may  call,  to  coin  a  word,  "  postjudice," 
not  the  bias  before  the  fair  trial,  but  the  bias  that 
remains  afterwards.  With  Browning's  swift  and 
emphatic  nature  the  bias  was  almost  always  formed 
before  he  had  gone  into  the  matter.  But  almost  all 
the  men  he  really  knew  he  admired,  almost  all  the 
books  he  had  really  read  he  enjoyed.  He  stands  pre- 
eminent among  those  great  universalists  who  praised 
the  ground  they  trod  on  and  commended  existence 
like  any  other  material,  in  its  samples.  He  had  no 
kinship  with  those  new  and  strange  universalists  of 
the  type  of  Tolstoi  who  praise  existence  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  the  institutions  they  have  lived  under,  and 
all  the  ties  they  have  known.  He  thought  the  world 
good  because  he  had  found  so  many  things  that  were 
good  in  it  —  religion,  the  nation,  the  family,  the  social 
class.  He  did  not,  like  the  new  humanitarian,  think 
the  world  good  because  he  had  found  so  many  things 
in  it  that  were  bad. 

As  has  been  previously  suggested,  there  was  some- 
thing very  queer  and  dangerous  that  underlay  all  the 
good  humour  of  Browning.  If  one  of  these  idle  pre- 
judices were  broken  by  better  knowledge,  he  was  all 
the  better  pleased.  But  if  some  of  the  prejudices  that 
were  really  rooted  in  him  were  trodden  on,  even  by 
accident,  such  as  his  aversion  to  loose  artistic  cliques, 
or  his  aversion  to  undignified  publicity,  his  rage  was 
something  wholly  transfiguring  and  alarming,  some- 
thing far  removed  from  the  shrill  disapproval  of 
Carlyle  and  Euskin.  It  can  only  be  said  that  he  be- 
came a  savage,  and  not  always  a  very  agreeable  or  pre- 
sentable savage.  The  indecent  fury  which  danced  upon 


116  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

the  bones  of  Edward  Fitzgerald  was  a  thing  which 
ought  not  to  have  astonished  any  one  who  had  known 
much  of  Browning's  character  or  even  of  his  work. 
Some  unfortunate  persons  on  another  occasion  had 
obtained  some  of  Mrs.  Browning's  letters  shortly  after 
her  death,  and  proposed  to  write  a  Life  founded  upon 
them.  They  ought  to  have  understood  that  Browning 
would  probably  disapprove ;  but  if  he  talked  to  them 
about  it,  as  he  did  to  others,  and  it  is  exceedingly 
probable  that  he  did,  they  must  have  thought  he  was 
mad.  "  What  I  suffer  with  the  paws  of  these  black- 
guards in  my  bowels  you  can  fancy,"  he  says.  Again 
he  writes :  "  Think  of  this  beast  working  away,  not 
deeming  my  feelings,  or  those  of  her  family,  worthy  of 
notice.  It  shall  not  be  done  if  I  can  stop  the  scamp's 
knavery  along  with  his  breath."  Whether  Browning 
actually  resorted  to  this  extreme  course  is  unknown; 
nothing  is  known  except  that  he  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
ambitious  biographer  which  reduced  him  to  silence, 
probably  from  stupefaction. 

The  same  peculiarity  ought,  as  I  have  said,  to  have 
been  apparent  to  any  one  who  knew  anything  of 
Browning's  literary  work.  A  great  number  of  his 
poems  are  marked  by  a  trait  of  which  by  its  nature 
it  is  more  or  less  impossible  to  give  examples.  Suf- 
fice it  to  say  that  it  is  truly  extraordinary  that 
poets  like  Swinburne  (who  seldom  uses  a  gross  word) 
should  have  been  spoken  of  as  if  they  had  introduced 
moral  license  into  Victorian  poetry.  What  the  Non- 
conformist conscience  has  been  doing  to  have  passed 
Browning  is  something  difficult  to  imagine.  But  the 
peculiarity  of  this  occasional  coarseness  in  his  work  is 
this  —  that  it  is  always  used  to  express  a  certain  whole- 


V.]  BROWNING   IN  LATER   LIFE  117 

some  fury  and  contempt  for  things  sickly,  or  ungener- 
ous, or  unmanly.  The  poet  seems  to  feel  that  there  are 
some  things  so  contemptible  that  you  can  only  speak 
of  them  in  pothouse  words.  It  would  be  idle,  and 
perhaps  undesirable,  to  give  examples ;  but  it  may  be 
noted  that  the  same  brutal  physical  metaphor  is  used 
by  his  Caponsacchi  about  the  people  who  could  imagine 
Pompilia  impure  and  by  his  Shakespeare  in  "  At  the 
Mermaid, "  about  the  claim  of  the  Byronic  poet  to  enter 
into  the  heart  of  humanity.  In  both  cases  Browning 
feels,  and  perhaps  in  a  manner  rightly,  that  the  best 
thing  we  can  do  with  a  sentiment  essentially  base  is  to 
strip  off  its  affectations  and  state  it  basely,  and  that 
the  mud  of  Chaucer  is  a  great  deal  better  than  the 
poison  of  Sterne.  Herein  again  Browning  is  close  to 
the  average  man ;  and  to  do  the  average  man  justice, 
there  is  a  great  deal  more  of  this  Browningesque  hatred 
of  Byronism  in  the  brutality  of  his  conversation  than 
many  people  suppose. 

Such,  roughly  and  as  far  as  we  can  discover,  was  the 
man  who,  in  the  full  summer  and  even  the  full  autumn 
of  his  intellectual  powers,  began  to  grow  upon  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  English  literary  world  about  this 
time.  For  the  first  time  friendship  grew  between  him 
and  the  other  great  men  of  his  time.  Tennyson,  for 
whom  he  then  and  always  felt  the  best  and  most 
personal  kind  of  admiration,  came  into  his  life,  and 
along  with  him  Gladstone  and  Francis  Palgrave.  There 
began  to  crowd  in  upon  him  those  honours  whereby  a 
man  is  to  some  extent  made  a  classic  in  his  lifetime, 
so  that  he  is  honoured  even  if  he  is  unread.  He  was 
made  a  Fellow  of  Balliol  in  1867,  and  the  homage  of  the 
great  universities  continued  thenceforth  unceasingly 


118  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

until  his  death,  despite  many  refusals  on  his  part.  He 
was  unanimously  elected  Lord  Rector  of  Glasgow 
University  in  1875.  He  declined  owing  to  his  deep 
and  somewhat  characteristic  aversion  to  formal  public 
speaking,  and  in  1877  he  had  to  decline  on  similar 
grounds  the  similar  offer  from  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews.  He  was  much  at  the  English  universities, 
was  a  friend  of  Dr.  Jowett,  and  enjoyed  the  university 
life  at  the  age  of  sixty-three  in  a  way  that  he  probably 
would  not  have  enjoyed  it  if  he  had  ever  been  to  a 
university.  The  great  universities  would  not  let  him 
alone,  to  their  great  credit,  and  he  became  a  D.C.L.  of 
Cambridge  in  1879,  and  a  D.C.L.  of  Oxford  in  1882. 
When  he  received  these  honours  there  were,  of  course, 
the  traditional  buffooneries  of  the  undergraduates,  and 
one  of  them  dropped  a  red  cotton  night-cap  neatly  on 
his  head  as  he  passed  under  the  gallery.  Some  in- 
dignant intellectuals  wrote  to  him  to  protest  against 
this  affront,  but  Browning  took  the  matter  in  the  best 
and  most  characteristic  way.  "  You  are  far  too  hard," 
he  wrote  in  answer,  "  on  the  very  harmless  drolleries 
of  the  young  men.  Indeed,  there  used  to  be  a  regularly 
appointed  jester,  '  Filius  Terrae '  he  was  called,  whose 
business  it  was  to  gibe  and  jeer  at  the  honoured  ones 
by  way  of  reminder  that  all  human  glories  are  merely 
gilded  baubles  and  must  not  be  fancied  metal."  In 
this  there  are  other  and  deeper  things  characteristic  of 
Browning  besides  his  learning  and  humour.  In  dis- 
cussing anything,  he  must  always  fall  back  upon  great 
speculative  and  eternal  ideas.  Even  in  the  tomfoolery 
of  a  horde  of  undergraduates  he  can  only  see  a  symbol 
of  the  ancient  office  of  ridicule  in  the  scheme  of 
morals.  The  young  men  themselves  were  probably 


v.]  BROWNING  IN  LATER   LIFE  119 

unaware  that  they  were  the  representatives  of  the 
"Filius  Terrae." 

But  the  years  during  which  Browning  was  thus 
reaping  some  of  his  late  laurels  began  to  be  filled  with 
incidents  that  reminded  him  how  the  years  were  pass- 
ing over  him.  On  June  20,  1866,  his  father  had  died, 
a  man  of  whom  it  is  impossible  to  think  without  a 
certain  emotion,  a  man  who  had  lived  quietly  and 
persistently  for  others,  to  whom  Browning  owed  more 
than  it  is  easy  to  guess,  to  whom  we  in  all  probability 
mainly  owe  Browning.  In  1868  one  of  his  closest 
friends,  Arabella  Barrett,  the  sister  of  his  wife,  died,  as 
her  sister  had  done,  alone  with  Browning.  Browning 
was  not  a  superstitious  man;  he  somewhat  stormily 
prided  himself  on  the  contrary ;  but  he  notes  at  this 
time  "  a  dream  which  Arabella  had  of  Her,  in  which 
she  prophesied  their  meeting  in  five  years,"  that  is, 
of  course,  the  meeting  of  Elizabeth  and  Arabella. 
His  friend  Milsand,  to  whom.  Sordello  was  dedicated, 
died  in  1886.  "  I  never  knew,"  said  Browning,  "or  ever 
shall  know,  his  like  among  men."  But  though  both 
fame  and  a  growing  isolation  indicated  that  he  was  pass- 
ing towards  the  evening  of  his  days,  though  he  bore  traces 
of  the  progress,  in  a  milder  attitude  towards  things,  and 
a  greater  preference  for  long  exiles  with  those  he  loved, 
one  thing  continued  in  him  with  unconquerable  energy 
—  there  was  no  diminution  in  the  quantity,  no  abate- 
ment in  the  immense  designs  of  his  intellectual  output. 

In  1871  he  produced  Balaustion's  Adventure,  a  work 
exhibiting  not  only  his  genius  in  its  highest  condition 
of  power,  but  something  more  exacting  even  than 
genius  to  a  man  of  his  mature  and  changed  life,  im- 
mense investigation,  prodigious  memory,  the  thorough 


120  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

assimilation  of  the  vast  literature  of  a  remote  civilisa- 
tion. Balaustion's  Adventure,  which  is,  of  course,  the 
mere  framework  for  an  English  version  of  the  Alcestis 
of  Euripides,  is  an  illustration  of  one  of  Browning's 
finest  traits,  his  immeasurable  capacity  for  a  classic  ad- 
miration. Those  who  knew  him  tell  us  that  in  conver- 
sation he  never  revealed  himself  so  impetuously  or  so 
brilliantly  as  when  declaiming  the  poetry  of  others; 
and  Balaustion's  Adventure  is  a  monument  of  this  fiery 
self-f orgetfulness.  It  is  penetrated  with  the  passionate 
desire  to  render  Euripides  worthily,  and  to  that  imita- 
tion are  for  the  time  being  devoted  all  the  gigantic 
powers  which  went  to  make  the  songs  of  Pippa  and  the 
last  agony  of  Guido.  Browning  never  put  himself  into 
anything  more  powerfully  or  more  successfully;  yet  it 
is  only  an  excellent  translation.  In  the  uncouth 
philosophy  of  Caliban,  in  the  tangled  ethics  of  Sludge, 
in  his  wildest  satire,  in  his  most  feather-headed  lyric, 
Browning  was  never  more  thoroughly  Browning  than 
in  this  splendid  and  unselfish  plagiarism.  This  revived 
excitement  in  Greek  matters ;  "  his  passionate  love  of 
the  Greek  language  "  continued  in  him  thenceforward 
till  his  death.  He  published  more  than  one  poem  on 
the  drama  of  Hellas.  Aristophanes'  Apology  came  out  in 
1875,  and  The  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus,  another  para- 
phrase, in  1877.  All  three  poems  are  marked  by  the 
same  primary  characteristic,  the  fact  that  the  writer 
has  the  literature  of  Athens  literally  at  his  fingers'  ends. 
He  is  intimate  not  only  with  their  poetry  and  politics, 
but  with  their  frivolity  and  their  slang ;  he  knows  not 
only  Athenian  wisdom,  but  Athenian  folly;  not  only 
the  beauty  of  Greece,  but  even  its  vulgarity.  In  fact, 
a  page  of  Aristophanes'  Apology  is  like  a  page  of 


v.]  BROWNING   IN   LATER    LIFE  121 

Aristophanes,  dark  with  levity  and   as  obscure  as  a 
schoolman's  treatise,  with  its  load  of  jokes. 

In  1871  also  appeared  Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau  : 
Saviour  of  Society,  one  of  the  finest  and  most 
picturesque  of  all  Browning's  apologetic  monologues. 
The  figure  is,  of  course,  intended  for  Napoleon  III., 
whose  Empire  had  just  fallen,  bringing  down  his 
country  with  it.  The  saying  has  been  often  quoted 
that  Louis  Napoleon  deceived  Europe  twice — once  when 
he  made  it  think  he  was  a  noodle,  and  once  when  he 
made  it  think  he  was  a  statesman.  It  might  be  added 
that  Europe  was  never  quite  just  to  him,  and  was 
deceived  a  third  time,  when  it  took  him  after  his  fall 
for  an  exploded  mountebank  and  nonentity.  Amid  the 
general  chorus  of  contempt  which  was  raised  over  his 
weak  and  unscrupulous  policy  in  later  years,  culminat- 
ing in  his  great  disaster,  there  are  few  things  finer  than 
this  attempt  of  Browning's  to  give  the  man  a  platform 
and  let  him  speak  for  himself.  It  is  the  apologia  of 
a  political  adventurer,  and  a  political  adventurer  of  a 
kind  peculiarly  open  to  popular  condemnation.  Man- 
kind has  always  been  somewhat  inclined  to  forgive  the 
adventurer  who  destroys  or  re-creates,  but  there  is 
nothing  inspiring  about  the  adventurer  who  merely 
preserves.  We  have  sympathy  with  the  rebel  who 
aims  at  reconstruction,  but  there  is  something  repugnant 
to  the  imagination  in  the  rebel  who  rebels  in  the  name 
of  compromise.  Browning  had  to  defend,  or  rather 
to  interpret  a  man,  who  kidnapped  politicians  in  the 
night  and  deluged  the  Montmartre  with  blood,  not  for 
an  ideal,  not  for  a  reform,  not  precisely  even  for  a 
cause,  but  simply  for  the  establishment  of  a  regime. 
He  did  these  hideous  things  not  so  much  that  he  might 


122  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

be  able  to  do  better  ones,  but  that  he  and  every  one 
else  might  be  able  to  do  nothing  for  twenty  years ;  and 
Browning's  contention,  and  a  very  plausible  contention, 
is  that  the  criminal  believed  that  his  crime  would 
establish  order  and  compromise,  or,  in  other  words, 
that  he  thought  that  nothing  was  the  very  best  thing 
he  and  his  people  could  do.  There  is  something 
peculiarly  characteristic  of  Browning  in  thus  selecting 
not  only  a  political  villain,  but  what  would  appear  the 
most  prosaic  kind  of  villain.  We  scarcely  ever  find 
in  Browning  a  defence  of  those  obvious  and  easily 
defended  publicans  and  sinners  whose  mingled  virtues 
and  vices  are  the  stuff  of  romance  and  melodrama  — 
the  generous  rake,  the  kindly  drunkard,  the  strong 
man  too  great  for  parochial  morals.  He  was  in  a  yet 
more  solitary  sense  the  friend  of  the  outcast.  He  took 
in  the  sinners  whom  even  sinners  cast  out.  He  went 
with  the  hypocrite  and  had  mercy  on  the  Pharisee. 

How  little  this  desire  of  Browning's,  to  look  for 
a  moment  at  the  man's  life  with  the  man's  eyes, 
was  understood,  may  be  gathered  from  the  criticisms 
on  Hohenstiel-Sclmangau,  which,  says  Browning,  "  the 
Editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  calls  my  eulogium  on 
the  Second  Empire,  which  it  is  not,  any  more  than 
what  another  wiseacre  affirms  it  to  be,  a  scandalous 
attack  on  the  old  constant  friend  of  England.  It  is 
just  what  I  imagine  the  man  might,  if  he  pleased,  say 
for  himself." 

In  1873  appeared  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country, 
which,  if  it  be  not  absolutely  one  of  the  finest 
of  Browning's  poems,  is  certainly  one  of  the  most 
magnificently  Browningesque.  The  origin  of  the  name 
of  the  poem  is  probably  well  known.  He  was  travel- 


v.]  BROWNING  IN  LATER   LIFE  123 

ling  along  the  Normandy  coast,  and  discovered  what 
he  called 

"  Meek,  hitherto  un-Murrayed  bathing-places, 
Best  loved  of  sea-coast-nook-full  Normandy  ! " 

Miss  Thackeray,  who  was  of  the  party,  delighted  Brown- 
ing beyond  measure  by  calling  the  sleepy  old  fishing 
district  "White  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country."  It  was 
exactly  the  kind  of  elfish  phrase  to  which  Browning 
had,  it  must  always  be  remembered,  a  quite  uncon- 
querable attraction.  The  notion  of  a  town  of  sleep, 
where  men  and  women  walked  about  in  night-caps,  a 
nation  of  somnambulists,  was  the  kind  of  thing  that 
Browning  in  his  heart  loved  better  than  Paradise  Lost. 
Some  time  afterwards  he  read  in  a  newspaper  a  very 
painful  story  of  profligacy  and  suicide  which  greatly 
occupied  the  French  journals  in  the  year  1871,  and 
which  had  taken  place  in  the  same  district.  It  is 
worth  noting  that  Browning  was  one  of  those  wise 
men  who  can  perceive  the  terrible  and  impressive 
poetry  of  the  police-news,  which  is  commonly  treated 
as  vulgarity,  which  is  dreadful  and  may  be  undesir- 
able, but  is  certainly  not  vulgar.  From  The  Ring 
and  the  Book  to  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country  a 
great  many  of  his  works  might  be  called  magnificent 
detective  stories.  The  story  is  somewhat  ugly,  and 
its  power  does  not  alter  its  ugliness,  for  power  can 
only  make  ugliness  uglier.  And  in  this  poem  there 
is  little  or  nothing  of  the  revelation  of  that  secret 
wealth  of  valour  and  patience  in  humanity  which 
makes  real  and  redeems  the  revelation  of  its  secret  vile- 
ness  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  It  almost  looks  at  first 
sight  as  if  Browning  had  for  a  moment  surrendered 


124  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

the  whole  of  his  impregnable  philosophical  position 
and  admitted  the  strange  heresy  that  a  human  story 
can  be  sordid.  But  this  view  of  the  poem  is,  of  course, 
a  mistake.  It  was  written  in  something  which,  for 
want  of  a  more  exact  word,  we  must  call  one  of  the 
bitter  moods  of  Browning;  but  the  bitterness  is  en- 
tirely the  product  of  a  certain  generous  hostility 
against  the  class  of  morbidities  which  he  really  de- 
tested, sometimes  more  than  they  deserved.  In  this 
poein  these  principles  of  weakness  and  evil  are  em- 
bodied to  him  as  the  sicklier  kind  of  Romanism,  and 
the  more  sensual  side  of  the  French  temperament.  We 
must  never  forget  what  a  great  deal  of  the  Puritan 
there  remained  in  Browning  to  the  end.  This  outburst 
of  it  is  fierce  and  ironical,  not  in  his  best  spirit.  It 
says  in  effect,  "  You  call  this  a  country  of  sleep,  I  call 
it  a  country  of  death.  You  call  it  'White  Cotton 
Night-Cap  Country ' ;  I  call  it  '  Red  Cotton  Night-Cap 
Country.' " 

Shortly  before  this,  in  1872,  he  had  published  Fifine 
at  the  Fair,  which  his  principal  biographer,  and  one 
of  his  most  uncompromising  admirers,  calls  a  piece  of 
perplexing  cynicism.  Perplexing  it  may  be  to  some 
extent,  for  it  was  almost  impossible  to  tell  whether 
Browning  would  or  would  not  be  perplexing  even  in 
a  love-song  or  a  post-card.  But  cynicism  is  a  word 
that  cannot  possibly  be  applied  with  any  propriety  to 
anything  that  Browning  ever  wrote.  Cynicism  denotes 
that  condition  of  mind  in  which  we  hold  that  life  is 
in  its  nature  mean  and  arid;  that  no  soul  contains 
genuine  goodness,  and  no  state  of  things  genuine 
reliability.  Fifine  at  the  Fair,  like  Prince  Hohenstiel- 
Schwangau,  is  one  of  Browning's  apologetic  soliloquies 


v.]  BROWNING  IN  LATER  LIFE  125 

— the  soliloquy  of  an  epicurean  who  seeks  half-playfully 
to  justify  upon  moral  grounds  an  infidelity  into  which 
he  afterwards  actually  falls.  This  casuist,  like  all 
Browning's  casuists,  is  given  many  noble  outbursts 
and  sincere  moments,  and  therefore  apparently  the 
poem  is  called  cynical.  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
what  particular  connection  there  is  between  seeing  good 
in  nobody  and  seeing  good  even  in  a  sensual  fool. 

After  Fifine  at  the  Fair  appeared  the  Inn  Album, 
in  1875,  a  purely  narrative  work,  chiefly  interesting 
as  exhibiting  in  yet  another  place  one  of  Browning's 
vital  characteristics,  a  pleasure  in  retelling  and  inter- 
preting actual  events  of  a  sinister  and  criminal  type ; 
and  after  the  Inn  Album  came  what  is  perhaps  the 
most  preposterously  individual  thing  he  ever  wrote, 
Of  Pacchiarotto,  and  How  He  Worked  in  Distemper,  in 
1876.  It  is  impossible  to  call  the  work  poetry,  and 
it  is  very  difficult  indeed  to  know  what  to  call  it.  Its 
chief  characteristic  is  a  kind  of  galloping  energy,  an 
energy  that  has  nothing  intellectual  or  even  intelligible 
about  it,  a  purely  animal  energy  of  words.  Not  only 
is  it  not  beautiful,  it  is  not  even  clever,  and  yet  it 
carries  the  reader  away  as  he  might  be  carried  away 
by  romping  children.  It  ends  up  with  a  voluble  and 
largely  unmeaning  malediction  upon  the  poet's  critics, 
a  malediction  so  outrageously  good-humoured  that  it 
does  not  take  the  trouble  even  to  make  itself  clear  to 
the  objects  of  its  wrath.  One  can  compare  the  poem 
to  nothing  in  heaven  or  earth,  except  to  the  somewhat 
humorous,  more  or  less  benevolent,  and  most  incom- 
prehensible catalogues  of  curses  and  oaths  which  may 
be  heard  from  an  intoxicated  navvy.  This  is  the  kind 
of  thing,  and  it  goes  on  for  pages  :  — 


126  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

"  Long  after  the  last  of  your  number 
Has  ceased  my  front-court  to  encumber 
While,  treading  down  rose  and  ranunculus, 
You  Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-'os  ! 
Troop,  all  of  you  man  or  homunculus, 
Quick  march  !  for  Xanthippe,  my  housemaid, 
If  once  on  your  pates  she  a  souse  made 
With  what,  pan  or  pot,  bowl  or  skoramis, 
First  comes  to  her  hand  —  things  were  more  amiss  ! 
I  would  not  for  worlds  be  your  place  in  — 
Recipient  of  slops  from  the  basin  ! 
You,  Jack-in-the-Green,  leaf-and-twiggishness 
Won't  save  a  dry  thread  on  your  priggishness  1 " 

You  can  only  call  this,  in  the  most  literal  sense  of 
the  word)  the  brute-force  of  language. 

In  spite  however  of  this  monstrosity  among  poems, 
which  gives  its  title  to  the  volume,  it  contains  some  of 
the  most  beautiful  verses  that  Browning  ever  wrote 
in  that  style  of  light  philosophy  in  which  he  was 
unequalled.  Nothing  ever  gave  so  perfectly  and 
artistically  what  is  too  loosely  talked  about  as  a  thrill, 
as  the  poem  called  "  Fears  and  Scruples,"  in  which  a 
man  describes  the  mystifying  conduct  of  an  absent 
friend,  and  reserves  to  the  last  line  the  climax  — 

"  Hush,  I  pray  you  ! 
What  if  this  friend  happen  to  be  —  God." 

It  is  the  masterpiece  of  that  excellent  but  much-abused 
literary  quality  Sensationalism. 

The  volume  entitled  Pacchiarotto,  moreover,  includes 
one  or  two  of  the  most  spirited  poems  on  the  subject 
of  the  poet  in  relation  to  publicity  —  "At  the  Mer- 
maid," «  House,"  and  "  Shop." 

In  spite  of  his  increasing  years,  his  books  seemed 


v.]  BROWNING   IN   LATER   LIFE  127 

if  anything  to  come  thicker  and  faster.  Two  were 
published  in  1878  —  La  Saisiaz,  his  great  metaphysi- 
cal poem  on  the  conception  of  immortality,  and  that 
delightfully  foppish  fragment  of  the  ancien  regime 
TJie  Tico  Poets  of  Croisic.  Those  two  poems  would 
alone  suffice  to  show  that  he  had  not  forgotten  the 
hard  science  of  theology  or  the  harder  science  of 
humour.  Another  collection  followed  in  1879,  the 
first  series  of  Dramatic  Idyls,  which  contain  such 
masterpieces  as  " Pheidippides "  and  "Ivan  Ivano- 
vitch."  Upon  its  heels,  in  1880,  came  the  second  series 
of  Dramatic  Idyls,  including  "Muleykeh"  and  "Clive," 
possibly  the  two  best  stories  in  poetry,  told  in  the 
best  manner  of  story-telling.  Then  only  did  the  mar- 
vellous fountain  begin  to  slacken  in  quantity,  but  never 
in  quality.  "  Jocoseria  "  did  not  appear  till  1883.  It 
contains  among  other  things  a  cast-back  to  his  very 
earliest  manner  in  the  lyric  of  "Never  the  Time  and 
the  Place,"  which  we  may  call  the  most  light-hearted 
love-song  that  was  ever  written  by  a  man  over  seventy. 
In  the  next  year  appeared  Ferishtah's  Fancies,  which 
exhibit  some  of  his  shrewdest  cosmic  sagacity,  ex- 
pressed in  some  of  his  quaintest  and  most  characteristic 
images.  Here  perhaps  more  than  anywhere  else  we 
see  that  supreme  peculiarity  of  Browning  —  his  sense 
of  the  symbolism  of  material  trifles.  Enormous  prob- 
lems, and  yet  more  enormous  answers,  about  pain, 
prayer,  destiny,  liberty,  and  conscience  are  suggested 
by  cherries,  by  the  sun,  by  a  melon-seller,  by  an  eagle 
flying  in  the  sky,  by  a  man  tilling  a  plot  of  ground. 
It  is  this  spirit  of  grotesque  allegory  which  really 
characterises  Browning  among  all  other  poets.  Other 
poets  might  possibly  have  hit  upon  the  same  philo- 


128  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

sophical  idea  —  some  idea  as  deep,  as  delicate,  and  as 
spiritual.  But  it  may  be  safely  asserted  that  no  other 
poet  having  thought  of  a  deep,  delicate,  and  spiritual 
idea  would  call  it  "  A  Bean  Stripe ;  also  Apple  Eating." 
Three  more  years  passed,  and  the  last  book  which 
Browning  published  in  his  lifetime,  was  Parleyings  with 
Certain  People  of  Importance  in  their  Day,  a  book  which 
consists  of  apostrophes,  amicable,  furious,  reverential, 
satirical,  emotional,  to  a  number  of  people  of  whom  the 
vast  majority  even  of  cultivated  people  have  never 
heard  in  their  lives  —  Daniel  Bartoli,  Francis  Furini, 
Gerard  de  Lairesse,  and  Charles  Avison.  This  extraor- 
dinary knowledge  of  the  fulness  of  history  was  a 
thing  which  never  ceased  to  characterise  Browning  even 
when  he  was  unfortunate  in  every  other  literary  quality. 
Apart  altogether  from  every  line  he  ever  wrote,  it  may 
fairly  be  said  that  no  mind  so  rich  as  his  ever  carried 
its  treasures  to  the  grave.  All  these  later  poems 
are  vigorous,  learned,  and  full-blooded.  They  are 
thoroughly  characteristic  of  their  author.  But  nothing 
in  them  is  quite  so  characteristic  of  their  author  as  this 
fact,  that  when  he  had  published  all  of  them,  and  was 
already  near  to  his  last  day,  he  turned  with  the  energy 
of  a  boy  let  out  of  school,  and  began,  of  all  things  in 
the  world,  to  re-write  and  improve  "Pauline,"  the 
boyish  poem  that  he  had  written  fifty-five  years  before. 
Here  was  a  man  covered  with  glory  and  near  to  the 
doors  of  death,  who  was  prepared  to  give  himself  the 
elaborate  trouble  of  reconstructing  the  mood,  and  re- 
building the  verses  of  a  long  juvenile  poem  which  had 
been  forgotten  for  fifty  years  in  the  blaze  of  successive 
victories.  It  is  such  things  as  these  which  give  to 
Browning  an  interest  of  personality  which  is  far  beyond 


v.]  BROWNING  IN  LATER   LIFE  129 

the  mere  interest  of  genius.  It  was  of  snch  things  that 
Elizabeth  Barrett  wrote  in  one  of  her  best  moments  of 
insight  —  that  his  genius  was  the  least  important  thing 
about  him. 

During  all  these  later  years,  Browning's  life  had 
been  a  quiet  and  regular  one.  He  always  spent  the 
winter  in  Italy  and  the  summer  in  London,  and  carried 
his  old  love  of  precision  to  the  extent  of  never  failing 
day  after  day  throughout  the  year  to  leave  the  house  at 
the  same  time.  He  had  by  this  time  become  far  more 
of  a  public  figure  than  he  had  ever  been  previously, 
both  in  England  and  Italy.  In  1881,  Dr.  Furnivall  and 
Miss  E.  H.  Hickey  founded  the  famous  "Browning 
Society."  He  became  President  of  the  new  "  Shake- 
speare Society "  and  of  the  "  Wordsworth  Society." 
In  1886,  on  the  death  of  Lord  Houghton,  he  accepted 
the  post  of  Foreign  Correspondent  to  the  Royal 
Academy.  When  he  moved  to  De  Vere  Gardens  in 
1887,  it  began  to  be  evident  that  he  was  slowly 
breaking  up.  He  still  dined  out  constantly ;  he  still 
attended  every  reception  and  private  view ;  he  still 
corresponded  prodigiously,  and  even  added  to  his  cor- 
respondence ;  and  there  is  nothing  more  typical  of  him 
than  that  now,  when  he  was  almost  already  a  classic, 
he  answered  any  compliment  with  the  most  delightful 
vanity  and  embarrassment.  In  a  letter  to  Mr.  George 
Bainton,  touching  style,  he  makes  a  remark  which  is 
an  excellent  criticism  on  his  whole  literary  career : 
"  I  myself  found  many  forgotten  fields  which  have 
proved  the  richest  of  pastures."  But  despite  his  con- 
tinued energy,  his  health  was  gradually  growing  worse. 
He  was  a  strong  man  in  a  muscular,  and  ordinarily  in 
a  physical  sense,  but  he  was  also  in  a  certain  sense  a 

K 


130  HUBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

nervous  man,  and  may  be  said  to  have  died  of  brain- 
excitement  prolonged  through  a  lifetime.  In  these 
closing  years  he  began  to  feel  more  constantly  the 
necessity  for  rest.  He  and  his  sister  went  to  live  at  a 
little  hotel  in  Llangollen,  and  spent  hours  together 
talking  and  drinking  tea  on  the  lawn.  He  himself 
writes  in  one  of  his  quaint  and  poetic  phrases  that  he 
had  come  to  love  these  long  country  retreats,  "  another 
term  of  delightful  weeks,  each  tipped  with  a  sweet 
starry  Sunday  at  the  little  church."  For  the  first  time, 
and  in  the  last  two  or  three  years,  he  was  really 
growing  old.  On  one  point  he  maintained  always  a 
tranquil  and  unvarying  decision.  The  pessimistic 
school  of  poetry  was  growing  up  all  round  him  ;  the 
decadents  with  their  belief  that  art  was  only  a  counting 
of  the  autumn  leaves  were  approaching  more  and  more 
towards  their  tired  triumph  and  their  tasteless  popu- 
larity. But  Browning  would  not  for  one  instant  take 
the  scorn  of  them  out  of  his  voice.  "  Death,  death,  it 
is  this  harping  on  death  that  I  despise  so  much.  In 
fiction,  in  poetry,  French  as  well  as  English,  and  I  am 
told  in  American  also,  in  art  and  literature,  the  shadow 
of  death,  call  it  what  you  will,  despair,  negation, 
indifference,  is  upon  us.  But  what  fools  who  talk 
thus  !  Why,  amico  mio,  you  know  as  well  as  I,  that 
death  is  life,  just  as  our  daily  momentarily  dying 
body  is  none  the  less  alive,  and  ever  recruiting  new 
forces  of  existence.  Without  death,  which  is  our 
church-yardy  crape-like  word  for  change,  for  growth, 
there  could  be  no  prolongation  of  that  which  we  call 
life.  Never  say  of  me  that  I  am  dead." 

On   August   13,    1888,    he   set    out   once   more   for 
Italy,  the  last  of  his  innumerable  voyages.     During  his 


v.]  BROWNING   IN   LATER   LIFE  131 

last  Italian  period  he  seems  to  have  fallen  back  on 
very  ultimate  simplicities,  chiefly  a  mere  staring  at 
nature.  The  family  with  whom  he  lived  kept  a  fox 
cub,  and  Browning  would  spend  hours  with  it  watching 
its  grotesque  ways ;  when  it  escaped,  he  was  character- 
istically enough  delighted.  The  old  man  could  be 
seen  continually  in  the  lanes  round  Asolo,  peering  into 
hedges  and  whistling  for  the  lizards. 

This  serene  and  pastoral  decline,  surely  the  mildest 
of  slopes  into  death,  was  suddenly  diversified  by  a 
flash  of  something  lying  far  below.  Browning's  eye 
fell  upon  a  passage  written  by  the  distinguished 
Edward  Fitzgerald,  who  had  been  dead  for  many 
years,  in  which  Fitzgerald  spoke  in  an  uncompli- 
mentary manner  of  Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 
Browning  immediately  wrote  the  "Lines  to  Edward 
Fitzgerald,"  and  set  the  whole  literary  world  in  an 
uproar.  The  lines  were  bitter  and  excessive  to  have 
been  written  against  any  man,  especially  bitter  and 
excessive  to  have  been  written  against  a  man  who  was 
not  alive  to  reply.  And  yet,  when  all  is  said,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  a  certain  dark  and  indescribable 
pleasure  in  this  last  burst  of  the  old  barbaric  energy. 
The  mountain  had  been  tilled  and  forested,  and  laid 
out  in  gardens  to  the  summit ;  but  for  one  last 
night  it  had  proved  itself  once  more  a  volcano,  and 
had  lit  up  all  the  plains  with  its  forgotten  fire.  And 
the  blow,  savage  as  it  was,  was  dealt  for  that  great 
central  sanctity  —  the  story  of  a  man's  youth.  All  that 
the  old  man  would  say  in  reply  to  every  view  of  the 
question  was,  "  I  felt  as  if  she  had  died  yesterday." 

Towards  December  of  1889  he  moved  to  Venice, 
where  he  fell  ill.  He  took  very  little  food;  it  was 


132  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP.  T. 

indeed  one  of  his  peculiar  small  fads  that  men  should 
not  take  food  when  they  are  ill,  a  matter  in  which  he 
maintained  that  the  animals  were  more  sagacious. 
He  asserted  vigorously  that  this  somewhat  singular 
regimen  would  pull  him  through,  talked  about  his 
plans,  and  appeared  cheerful.  Gradually,  however,  the 
talking  became  more  infrequent,  the  cheerfulness 
passed  into  a  kind  of  placidity ;  and  without  any 
particular  crisis  or  sign  of  the  end,  Eobert  Browning 
died  on  December  12,  1889.  The  body  was  taken 
on  board  ship  by  the  Venice  Municipal  Guard,  and 
received  by  the  Eoyal  Italian  marines.  He  was  buried 
in  the  Poet's  Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey,  the  choir 
singing  his  wife's  poem,  "He  giveth  His  beloved 
sleep."  On  the  day  that  he  died  "Asolando"  was 
published. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BROWNING   AS    A   LITERARY    ARTIST 

MR.  WILLIAM  SHARP,  in  his  Life  of  Browning,  quotes 
the  remarks  of  another  critic  to  the  following  effect : 
"  The  poet's  processes  of  thought  are  scientific  in  their 
precision  and  analysis ;  the  sudden  conclusion  that  he 
imposes  upon  them  is  transcendental  and  inept." 

This  is  a  very  fair  but  a  very  curious  example  of 
the  way  in  which  Browning  is  treated.  For  what  is 
the  state  of  affairs  ?  A  man  publishes  a  series  of 
poems,  vigorous,  perplexing,  and  unique.  The  critics 
read  them,  and  they  decide  that  he  has  failed  as  a 
poet,  but  that  he  is  a  remarkable  philosopher  and 
logician.  They  then  proceed  to  examine  his  philoso- 
phy, and  show  with  great  triumph  that  it  is  unphilo- 
sophical,  and  to  examine  his  logic  and  show  with  great 
triumph  that  it  is  not  logical,  but  "  transcendental  and 
inept."  In  other  words,  Browning  is  first  denounced 
for  being  a  logician  and  not  a  poet,  and  then  denounced 
for  insisting  on  being  a  poet  when  they  have  decided 
that  he  is  to  be  a  logician.  It  is  just  as  if  a  man  were 
to  say  first  that  a  garden  was  so  neglected  that  it  was 
only  fit  for  a  boys'  playground,  and  then  complain  of 
the  unsuitability  in  a  boys'  playground  of  rockeries 
and  flower-beds. 

As  we  find,  after  this  manner,  that  Browning  does 
133 


134  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

not  act  satisfactorily  as  that  which  we  have  decided 
that  he  shall  be  —  a  logician  —  it  might  possibly  be 
worth  while  to  make  another  attempt  to  see  whether  he 
may  not,  after  all,  be  more  valid  than  we  thought  as  to 
what  he  himself  professed  to  be  —  a  poet.  And  if  we 
study  this  seriously  and  sympathetically,  we  shall  soon 
come  to  a  conclusion.  It  is  a  gross  and  complete 
slander  upon  Browning  to  say  that  his  processes  of 
thought  are  scientific  in  their  precision  and  analysis. 
They  are  nothing  of  the  sort ;  if  they  were,  Browning 
could  not  be  a  good  poet.  The  critic  speaks  of  the 
conclusions  of  a  poem  as  "  transcendental  and  inept "  ; 
but  the  conclusions  of  a  poem,  if  they  are  not  trans- 
cendental, must  be  inept.  Do  the  people  who  call 
one  of  Browning's  poems  scientific  in  its  analysis  realise 
the  meaning  of  what  they  say  ?  One  is  tempted  to 
think  that  they  know  a  scientific  analysis  when 
they  see  it  as  little  as  they  know  a  good  poem.  The 
one  supreme  difference  between  the  scientific  method 
and  the  artistic  method  is,  roughly  speaking,  simply 
this  —  that  a  scientific  statement  means  the  same  thing 
wherever  and  whenever  it  is  uttered,  and  that  an 
artistic  statement  means  something  entirely  different, 
according  to  the  relation  in  which  it  stands  to  its 
surroundings.  The  remark,  let  us  say,  that  the  whale 
is  a  mammal,  or  the  remark  that  sixteen  ounces  go  to 
a  pound,  is  equally  true,  and  means  exactly  the  same 
thing  whether  we  state  it  at  the  beginning  of  a  con- 
versation or  at  the  end,  whether  we  print  it  in  a 
dictionary  or  chalk  it  up  on  a  wall.  But  if  we  take 
some  phrase  commonly  used  in  the  art  of  literature  — 
such  a  sentence,  for  the  sake  of  example,  as  "  the  dawn 
was  breaking  "•— the  matter  is  quite  different.  If  the 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  135 

sentence  carne  at  the  beginning  of  a  short  story,  it 
might  be  a  mere  descriptive  prelude.  If  it  were  the 
last  sentence  in  a  short  story,  it  might  be  poignant  with 
some  peculiar  irony  or  triumph.  Can  any  one  read 
Browning's  great  monologues  and  not  feel  that  they 
are  built  up  like  a  good  short  story,  entirely  on  this 
principle  of  the  value  of  language  arising  from  its 
arrangement?  Take  such  an  example  as  "Caliban 
upon  Setebos,"  a  wonderful  poem  designed  to  describe 
the  way  in  which  a  primitive  nature  may  at  once  be 
afraid  of  its  gods  and  yet  familiar  with  them.  Caliban 
in  describing  his  deity  starts  with  a  more  or  less  natural 
and  obvious  parallel  between  the  deity  and  himself, 
carries  out  the  comparison  with  consistency  and  an 
almost  revolting  simplicity,  and  ends  in  a  kind  of 
blasphemous  extravaganza  of  anthropomorphism,  bas- 
ing his  conduct  not  merely  on  the  greatness  and  wis- 
dom, but  also  on  the  manifest  weaknesses  and 
stupidities  of  the  Creator  of  all  things.  Then  sud- 
denly a  thunderstorm  breaks  over  Caliban's  island, 
and  the  profane  speculator  falls  fiat  upon  his  face  — 

"  Lo  !     'Lieth  flat  and  love th  Setebos  ! 
'Maketh  his  teeth  meet  through  his  upper  lip, 
Will  let  those  quails  fly,  will  not  eat  this  month 
One  little  mass  of  whelks,  so  he  may  'scape  !  " 

Surely  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  persuade  oneself 
that  this  thunderstorm  would  have  meant  exactly  the 
same  thing  if  it  had  occurred  at  the  beginning  of 
"  Caliban  upon  Setebos."  It  does  not  mean  the  same 
thing,  but  something  very  different ;  and  the  deduction 
from  this  is  the  curious  fact  that  Browning  is  an 
artist,  and  that  consequently  his  processes  of  thought 
are  not  "  scientific  in  their  precision  and  analysis." 


136  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

No  criticism  of  Browning's  poems  can  be  vital,  none 
in  the  face  of  the  poems  themselves  can  be  even  intelli- 
gible which  is  not  based  upon  the  fact  that  he  was 
successfully  or  otherwise  a  conscious  and  deliberate 
artist.  He  may  have  failed  as  an  artist,  though  I  do 
not  think  so ;  that  is  quite  a  different  matter.  But  it 
is  one  thing  to  say  that  a  man  through  vanity  or 
ignorance  has  built  an  ugly  cathedral,  and  quite  another 
to  say  that  he  built  it  in  a  fit  of  absence  of  mind,  and 
did  not  know  whether  he  was  building  a  lighthouse  or 
a  first-class  hotel.  Browning  knew  perfectly  well  what 
he  was  doing ;  and  if  the  reader  does  not  like  his  art,  at 
least  the  author  did.  The  general  sentiment  expressed 
in  the  statement  that  he  did  not  care  about  form  is 
simply  the  most  ridiculous  criticism  that  could  be 
conceived.  It  would  be  far  nearer  the  truth  to  say 
that  he  cared  more  for  form  than  any  other  English 
poet  who  ever  lived.  He  was  always  weaving  and 
modelling  and  inventing  new  forms.  Among  all  his 
two  hundred  to  three  hundred  poems  it  would  scarcely 
be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  there  are  half  as  many 
different  metres  as  there  are  different  poems. 

The  great  English  poets  who  are  supposed  to  have 
cared  more  for  form  than  Browning  did,  cared  less  at 
least  in  this  sense  —  that  they  were  content  to  use  old 
forms  so  long  as  they  were  certain  that  they  had  new 
ideas.  Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  no  sooner  had  a 
new  idea  than  he  tried  to  make  a  new  form  to  express 
it.  Wordsworth  and  Shelley  were  really  original  poets ; 
their  attitude  of  thought  and  feeling  marked  without 
doubt  certain  great  changes  in  literature  and  philoso- 
phy. Nevertheless,  the  "  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of 
Immortality  "  is  a  perfectly  normal  and  traditional  ode, 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  137 

and  "Prometheus  Unbound"  is  a  perfectly  genuine 
and  traditional  Greek  lyrical  drama.  But  if  we  study 
Browning  honestly,  nothing  will  strike  us  more  than  that 
he  really  created  a  large  number  of  quite  novel  and 
quite  admirable  artistic  forms.  It  is  too  often  forgot- 
ten what  and  how  excellent  these  were.  TJie  Ring  and 
the  Book,  for  example,  is  an  illuminating  departure  in 
literary  method  —  the  method  of  telling  the  same  story 
several  times  and  trusting  to  the  variety  of  human 
character  to  turn  it  into  several  different  and  equally 
interesting  stories.  Pippa  Passes,  to  take  another 
example,  is  a  new  and  most  fruitful  form,  a  series  of 
detached  dramas  connected  only  by  the  presence  of  one 
fugitive  and  isolated  figure.  The  invention  of  these 
things  is  not  merely  like  the  writing  of  a  good  poem  — 
it  is  something  like  the  invention  of  the  sonnet  or  the 
Gothic  arch.  The  poet  who  makes  them  does  not 
merely  create  himself  —  he  creates  other  poets.  It  is 
so  in  a  degree  long  past  enumeration  with  regard  to 
Browning's  smaller  poems.  Such  a  pious  and  horrible 
lyric  as  "The  Heretic's  Tragedy,"  for  instance,  is 
absolutely  original,  with  its  weird  and  almost  blood- 
curdling echo  verses,  mocking  echoes  indeed  — 

"  And  clipt  of  his  wings  in  Paris  square, 
They  bring  him  now  to  be  burned  alive. 
[And  wanteth  there  grace  of  lute  or  clavicithern, 
ye  shall  say  to  confirm  him  who  singeth  — 
We  bring  John  now  to  be  burned  alive." 
A  hundred  instances  might,  of  course,  be  given.    Milton's 
"  Sonnet  on  his  Blindness,"  or  Keats'  "Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Urn,"  are  both  thoroughly  original,  but  still  we  can 
point  to  other  such  sonnets  and  other  such  odes.     But 
can  any  one  mention  any  poem  of  exactly  the  same 


138  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

structural  and  literary  type  as  "  Fears  and  Scruples," 
as  "  The  Householder,"  as  "  House "  or  "  Shop,"  as 
"  Nationality  in  Drinks,"  as  "  Sibrandus  Schaf  nabur- 
gensis,"  as  "My  Star,"  as  "A  Portrait,"  as  any  of 
"  Ferishtah's  Fancies,"  as  any  of  the  "  Bad  Dreams." 

The  thing  which  ought  to  be  said  about  Browning 
by  those  who  do  not  enjoy  him  is  simply  that  they  do 
not  like  his  form ;  that  they  have  studied  the  form,  and 
think  it  a  bad  form.  If  more  people  said  things  of  this 
sort,  the  world  of  criticism  would  gain  almost  unspeak- 
ably in  clarity  and  common  honesty.  Browning  put 
himself  before  the  world  as  a  good  poet.  Let  those 
who  think  he  failed  call  him  a  bad  poet,  and  there  will 
be  an  end  of  the  matter.  There  are  many  styles  in 
art  which  perfectly  competent  aesthetic  judges  cannot 
endure.  For  instance,  it  would  be  perfectly  legitimate 
for  a  strict  lover  of  Gothic  to  say  that  one  of  the 
monstrous  rococo  altar-pieces  in  the  Belgian  churches 
with  bulbous  clouds  and  oaken  sun-rays  seven  feet 
long,  was,  in  his  opinion,  ugly.  But  surely  it  would 
be  perfectly  ridiculous  for  any  one  to  say  that  it  had  no 
form.  A  man's  actual  feelings  about  it  might  be  better 
expressed  by  saying  that  it  had  too  much.  To  say 
that  Browning  was  merely  a  thinker  because  you  think 
"  Caliban  upon  Setebos  "  ugly,  is  precisely  as  absurd  as 
it  would  be  to  call  the  author  of  the  old  Belgian  altar- 
piece  a  man  devoted  only  to  the  abstractions  of  religion. 
The  truth  about  Browning  is  not  that  he  was  indifferent 
to  technical  beauty,  but  that  he  invented  a  particular 
kind  of  technical  beauty  to  which  any  one  else  is  free 
to  be  as  indifferent  as  he  chooses. 

There  is  in  this  matter  an  extraordinary  tendency  to 
vague  and  unmeaning  criticism.  The  usual  way  of 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS   A   LITERARY  ARTIST  139 

criticising  an  author,  particularly  an  author  who  has 
added  something  to  the  literary  forms  of  the  world,  is 
to  complain  that  his  work  does  not  contain  something 
which  is  obviously  the  speciality  of  somebody  else. 
The  correct  thing  to  say  about  Maeterlinck  is  that 
some  play  of  his  in  which,  let  us  say,  a  princess  dies  in 
a  deserted  tower  by  the  sea,  has  a  certain  beauty,  but 
that  we  look  in  vain  in  it  for  that  robust  geniality,  that 
really  boisterous  will  to  live  which  may  be  found  in 
Martin  Chuzzleicit.  The  right  thing  to  say  about 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac  is  that  it  may  have  a  certain 
kind  of  wit  and  spirit,  but  that  it  really  throws  no  light 
on  the  duty  of  middle-aged  married  couples  in  Norway. 
It  cannot  be  too  much  insisted  upon  that  at  least  three- 
quarters  of  the  blame  and  criticism  commonly  directed 
against  artists  and  authors  falls  under  this  general 
objection,  and  is  essentially  valueless.  Authors  both 
great  and  small  are  like  everything  else  in  existence, 
upon  the  whole  greatly  under-rated.  They  are  blamed 
for  not  doing,  not  only  what  they  have  failed  to  do  to 
reach  their  own  ideal,  but  what  they  have  never  tried 
to  do  to  reach  every  other  writer's  ideal.  If  we  can 
show  that  Browning  had  a  definite  ideal  of  beauty  and 
loyally  pursued  it,  it  is  not  necessary  to  prove  that  he 
could  have  written  In  Memoriam  if  he  had  tried. 

Browning  has  suffered  far  more  injustice  from  his 
admirers  than  from  his  opponents,  for  his  admirers 
have  for  the  most  part  got  hold  of  the  matter,  so  to 
speak,  by  the  wrong  end.  They  believe  that  what  is 
ordinarily  called  the  grotesque  style  of  Browning  was 
a  kind  of  necessity  boldly  adopted  by  a  great  genius  in 
order  to  express  novel  and  profound  ideas.  But  this 
is  an  entire  mistake.  What  is  called  ugliness  was  to 


140  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAF. 

Browning  not  in  the  least  a  necessary  evil,  but  a  quite 
unnecessary  luxury,  which  he  enjoyed  for  its  own  sake. 
For  reasons  that  we  shall  see  presently  in  discussing 
the  philosophical  use  of  the  grotesque,  it  did  so  happen 
that  Browning's  grotesque  style  was  very  suitable  for 
the  expression  of  his  peculiar  moral  and  metaphysical 
view.  But  the  whole  mass  of  poems  will  be  misunder- 
stood if  we  do  not  realise  first  of  all  that  he  had  a 
/love  of  the  grotesque  of  the  nature  of  art  for  art's 
\  sake.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  short  distinct  poem 
merely  descriptive  of  one  of  those  elfish  German  jugs 
in  which  it  is  to  be  presumed  Tokay  had  been  served 
to  him.  This  is  the  whole  poem,  and  a  very  good  poem 
too  — 

"  Up  jumped  Tokay  on  our  table, 
Like  a  pigmy  castle-warder, 
Dwarfish  to  see,  but  stout  and  able, 
Arms  and  accoutrements  all  in  order  ; 
And  fierce  he  looked  North,  then,  wheeling  South 
Blew  with  his  bugle  a  challenge  to  Drouth, 
Cocked  his  flap-hat  with  the  tosspot- feather, 
Twisted  his  thumb  in  his  red  moustache, 
Jingled  his  huge  brass  spurs  together, 
Tightened  his  waist  with  its  Buda  sash, 
And  then,  with  an  impudence  nought  could  abash, 
Shrugged  his  hump-shoulder,  to  tell  the  beholder, 
For  twenty  such  knaves  he  would  laugh  but  the  bolder : 
And  so,  with  his  sword-hilt  gallantly  jutting, 
And  dexter-hand  on  his  haunch  abutting, 
Went  the  little  man,  Sir  Ausbruch,  strutting  1 " 

I  suppose  there  are  Browning  students  in  existence 
who  would  think  that  this  poem  contained  something 
pregnant  about  the  Temperance  question,  or  was  a 
marvellously  subtle  analysis  of  the  romantic  movement 
in  Germany.  But  surely  to  most  of  us  it  is  sufficiently 


vi.]  BROWNING   AS   A   LITERARY  ARTIST  141 

apparent  that  Browning  was  simply  fashioning  a  ri- 
diculous knick-knack,  exactly  as  if  he  were  actually 
moulding  one  of  these  preposterous  German  jugs. 
Now  before  studying  the  real  character  of  this 
Browningesque  style,  there  is  one  general  truth  to  be 
recognised  about  Browning's  work.  It  is  this  —  that 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  remember  that  Browning 
had,  like  every  other  poet,  his  simple  and  indisputable 
failures,  and  that  it  is  one  thing  to  speak  of  the  bad- 
ness of  his  artistic  failures,  and  quite  another  thing 
to  speak  of  the  badness  of  his  artistic  aim.  Brown- 
ing's style  may  be  a  good  style,  and  yet  exhibit  many 
examples  of  a  thoroughly  bad  use  of  it.  On  this  point 
there  is  indeed  a  singularly  unfair  system  of  judgment 
used  by  the  public  towards  the  poets.  It  is  very  little 
realised  that  the  vast  majority  of  great  poets  have 
written  an  enormous  amount  of  very  bad  poetry.  The 
unfortunate  Wordsworth  is  generally  supposed  to  be 
almost  alone  in  this ;  but  any  one  who  thinks  so  can 
scarcely  have  read  a  certain  number  of  the  minor 
poems  of  Byron  and  Shelley  and  Tennyson. 

Now  it  is  only  just  to  Browning  that  his  more 
uncouth  effusions  should  not  be  treated  as  masterpieces 
by  which  he  must  stand  or  fall,  but  treated  simply  as 
his  failures.  It  is  really  true  that  such  a  line  as 

"Irks  fear  the  crop-full  bird,  frets  doubt  the  maw-crammed 
beast?" 

is  a  very  ugly  and  a  very  bad  line.  But  it  is  quite 
equally  true  that  Tennyson's 

"And  that  good  man,  the  clergyman,  has  told  me  words  of 
peace," 

is  a  very  ugly  and  a  very  bad  line.     But  people  do  not 


142  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

say  that  this  proves  that  Tennyson  was  a  mere  crabbed 
controversialist  and  metaphysician.  They  say  that  it 
is  a  bad  example  of  Tennyson's  form ;  they  do  not  say 
that  it  is  a  good  example  of  Tennyson's  indifference  to 
form.  Upon  the  whole,  Browning  exhibits  far  fewer 
instances  of  this  failure  in  his  own  style  than  any  other 
of  the  great  poets,  with  the  exception  of  one  or  two  like 
Spenser  and  Keats,  who  seem  to  have  a  mysterious 
incapacity  for  writing  bad  poetry.  But  almost  all 
original  poets,  particularly  poets  who  have  invented  an 
artistic  style,  are  subject  to  one  most  disastrous  habit  — 
the  habit  of  writing  imitations  of  themselves.  Every 
now  and  then  in  the  works  of  the  noblest  classical 
poets  you  will  come  upon  passages  which  read  like 
extracts  from  an  American  book  of  parodies.  Swin- 
burne, for  example,  when  he  wrote  the  couplet  — 

"From  the  lilies  and  languors  of  virtue 
To  the  raptures  and  roses  of  vice," 

wrote  what  is  nothing  but  a  bad  imitation  of  himself, 
an  imitation  which  seems  indeed  to  have  the  wholly 
unjust  and  uncritical  object  of  proving  that  the  Swin- 
burnian  melody  is  a  mechanical  scheme  of  initial  let- 
ters. Or  again,  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  when  he  wrote 
the  line  — 

"  Or  ride  with  the  reckless  seraphim   on  the  rim  of  a  red- 
maned  star," 

was  caricaturing  himself  in  the  harshest  and  least  sym- 
pathetic spirit  of  American  humour.  This  tendency 
is,  of  course,  the  result  of  self-consciousness  and 
theatricality  of  modern  life  in  which  each  of  us  is 
forced  to  conceive  ourselves  as  part  of  a  dramatis 
personce  and  act  perpetually  in  character.  Browning 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS   A   LITERARY  ARTIST  143 

sometimes  yielded  to  this  temptation  to  be  a  great 
deal  too  like  himself. 

"  Will  I  widen  thee  out  till  them  turnest 
From  Margaret  Minnikin  mou'  by  God's  grace, 
To  Muckle-mouth  Meg  in  good  earnest." 

This  sort  of  thing  is  not  to  be  defended  in  Browning 
any  more  than  in  Swinburne.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  not  to  be  attributed  in  Swinburne  to  a  momentary 
exaggeration,  and  in  Browning  to  a  vital  aesthetic 
deficiency.  In  the  case  of  Swinburne,  we  all  feel  that 
the  question  is  not  whether  that  particular  preposterous 
couplet  about  lilies  and  roses  redounds  to  the  credit  of 
the  Swinburnian  style,  but  whether  it  would  be  possible 
in  any  other  style  than  the  Swinburnian  to  have  written 
the  Hymn  to  Proserpine.  In  the  same  way,  the 
essential  issue  about  Browning  as  an  artist  is  not 
whether  he,  in  common  with  Byron,  Wordsworth, 
Shelley,  Tennyson,  and  Swinburne,  sometimes  wrote 
bad  poetry,  but  whether  in  any  other  style  except 
Browning's  you  could  have  achieved  the  precise  artistic 
effect  which  is  achieved  by  such  incomparable  lyrics 
as  "The  Patriot"  or  "The  Laboratory."  The  answer 
must  be  in  the  negative,  and  in  that  answer  lies  the 
whole  justification  of  Browning  as  an  artist. 

The  question  now  arises,  therefore,  what  was  his 
conception  of  his  functions  as  an  artist  ?  We  have 
already  agreed  that  his  artistic  originality  concerned 
itself  chiefly  with  the  serious  use  of  the  grotesque. 
It  becomes  necessary,  therefore,  to  ask  what  is  the 
serious  use  of  the  grotesque,  and  what  relation  does 
the  grotesque  bear  to  the  eternal  and  fundamental 
elements  in  life? 


144  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

One  of  the  most  curious  things  to  notice  about 
popular  aesthetic  criticism  is  the  number  of  phrases  it 
will  be  found  to  use  which  are  intended  to  express  an 
aesthetic  failure,  and  which  express  merely  an  aesthetic 
variety.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  traveller  will  often 
hear  the  advice  from  local  lovers  of  the  picturesque, 
"  The  scenery  round  such  and  such  a  place  has  no 
interest;  it  is  quite  flat."  To  disparage  scenery  as 
quite  flat  is,  of  course,  like  disparaging  a  swan  as  quite 
white,  or  an  Italian  sky  as  quite  blue.  Flatness  is  a 
sublime  quality  in  certain  landscapes,  just  as  rockiness 
is  a  sublime  quality  in  others.  In  the  same  way  there 
are  a  great  number  of  phrases  commonly  used  in  order 
to  disparage  such  writers  as  Browning  which  do  not  in 
fact  disparage,  but  merely  describe  them.  One  of  the 
most  distinguished  of  Browning's  biographers  and  critics 
says  of  him,  for  example,  "  He  has  never  meant  to  be 
rugged,  but  has  become  so  in  striving  after  strength." 
To  say  that  Browning  never  tried  to  be  rugged  is  like 
saying  that  Edgar  Allan  Poe  never  tried  to  be  gloomy, 
or  that  Mr.  W.  S.  Gilbert  never  tried  to  be  extravagant. 
The  whole  issue  depends  upon  whether  we  realise  the 
simple  and  essential  fact  that  ruggedness  is  a  mode  of 
art  like  gloominess  or  extravagance.  Some  poems  ought 
to  be  rugged,  just  as  some  poems  ought  to  be  smooth. 
When  we  see  a  drift  of  stormy  and  fantastic  clouds  at 
sunset,  we  do  not  say  that  the  cloud  is  beautiful  al- 
though it  is  ragged  at  the  edges.  When  we  see  a  gnarled 
and  sprawling  oak,  we  do  not  say  that  it  is  fine  although 
it  is  twisted.  When  we  see  a  mountain,  we  do  not  say 
that  it  is  impressive  although  it  is  rugged,  nor  do  we 
say  apologetically  that  it  never  meant  to  be  rugged, 
but  became  so  in  its  striving  after  strength.  Now,  to 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  146 

say  that  Browning's  poems,  artistically  considered,  are 
fine  although  they  are  rugged,  is  quite  as  absurd  as  to 
say  that  a  rock,  artistically  considered,  is  fine  although 
it  is  rugged.  Ruggedness  being  an  essential  quality  in 
the  universe,  there  is  that  in  man  which  responds  to  it 
as  to  the  striking  of  any  other  chord  of  the  eternal 
harmonies.  As  the  children  of  nature,  we  are  akin  not 
only  to  the  stars  and  flowers,  but  also  to  the  toadstools 
and  the  monstrous  tropical  birds.  And  it  is  to  be 
repeated  as  the  essential  of  the  question  that  on  this 
side  of  our  nature  we  do  emphatically  love  the  form 
of  the  toadstools,  and  not  merely  some  complicated 
botanical  and  moral  lessons  which  the  philosopher  may 
draw  from  them.  For  example,  just  as  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  a  poetical  metre  being  beautifully  light  or 
beautifully  grave  and  haunting,  so  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  a  poetical  metre  being  beautifully  rugged.  In 
the  old  ballads,  for  instance,  every  person  of  literary 
taste  will  be  struck  by  a  certain  attractiveness  in  the 
bold,  varying,  irregular  verse  — 

"  He  is  either  himsel'  a  devil  frae  hell, 
Or  else  his  mother  a  witch  maun  be  ; 
I  wadna  have  ridden  that  wan  water 
For  a'  the  gowd  in  Christentie," 

is  quite  as  pleasing  to  the  ear  in  its  own  way  as 

"  There's  a  bower  of  roses  by  Bendermeer  stream, 
And  the  nightingale  sings  in  it  all  the  night  long," 

is  in  another  way.  Browning  had  an  unrivalled  ear  for 
this  particular  kind  of  staccato  music.  The  absurd 
notion  that  he  had  no  sense  of  melody  in  verse  is  only 
possible  to  people  who  think  that  there  is  no  melody  in 


146  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

verse  which  is  not  an  imitation  of  Swinburne.  To  give 
a  satisfactory  idea  of  Browning's  rhythmic  originality 
would  be  impossible  without  quotations  more  copious 
than  entertaining.  But  the  essential  point  has  been 
suggested. 

"  They  were  purple  of  raiment  and  golden, 
Filled  full  of  thee,  fiery  with  wine, 
Thy  lovers  in  haunts  unbeholden, 
In  marvellous  chambers  of  thine," 

is  beautiful  language,  but  not  the  only  sort  of  beautiful 
language.  This,  for  instance,  has  also  a  tune  in  it  — 

"I —  'next  poet.'     No,  my  hearties, 
I  nor  am,  nor  fain  would  be  ! 
Choose  your  chiefs  and  pick  your  parties, 
Not  one  soul  revolt  to  me  ! 
****** 
Which  of  you  did  I  enable 
Once  to  slip  inside  my  breast, 
There  to  catalogue  and  label 
What  I  like  least,  what  love  best, 
Hope  and  fear,  believe  and  doubt  of, 
Seek  and  shun,  respect,  deride, 
Who  has  right  to  make  a  rout  of 
Rarities  he  found  inside  ?  " 

This  quick,  gallantly  stepping  measure  also  has  its 
own  kind  of  music,  and  the  man  who  cannot  feel  it  can 
never  have  enjoyed  the  sound  of  soldiers  inarching  by. 
This,  then,  roughly  is  the  main  fact  to  remember  about 
Browning's  poetical  method,  or  about  any  one's  poetical 
method  —  that  the  question  is  not  whether  that  method 
is  the  best  in  the  world,  but  the  question  whether  there 
are  not  certain  things  which  can  only  be  conveyed  by 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  147 

that  method.  It  is  perfectly  true,  for  instance,  that  a 
really  lofty  and  lucid  line  of  Tennyson,  such  as  — 

"  Thou  wert  the  highest,  yet  most  human  too," 
and 

"  We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it," 

would  really  be  made  the  worse  for  being  translated 
into  Browning.  It  would  probably  become 

"  High's  human ;  man  loves  best,  best  visible," 

and  would  lose  its  peculiar  clarity  and  dignity  and 
courtly  plainness.  But  it  is  quite  equally  true  that  any 
really  characteristic  fragment  of  Browning,  if  it  were 
only  the  tempestuous  scolding  of  the  organist  in 
"  Master  Hugues  of  Saxe-Gotha  "  — 

"  Hallo,  you  sacristan,  show  us  a  light  there ! 

Down  it  dips,  gone  like  a  rocket. 
What,  you  want,  do  you,  to  come  unawares, 
Sweeping  the  church  up  for  first  morning-prayers, 
And  find  a  poor  devil  has  ended  his  cares 
At  the  foot  of  your  rotten-runged  rat-riddled  stairs  ? 

Do  I  carry  the  moon  in  my  pocket  ?  " 

— it  is  quite  equally  true  that  this  outrageous  gallop  of 
rhymes  ending  with  a  frantic  astronomical  image  would 
lose  in  energy  and  spirit  if  it  were  written  in  a  con- 
ventional and  classical  style,  and  ran  — 

"  What  must  I  deem  then  that  thou  dreamest  to  find 
Disjected  bones  adrift  upon  the  stair 
Thou  sweepest  clean,  or  that  thou  deemest  that  I 
Pouch  in  my  wallet  the  vice-regal  sun  ?  " 

Is  it  not  obvious  that  this  statelier  version  might  bo 
excellent  poetry  of  its  kind,  and   yet  would  be  bad 


148  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

exactly  in  so  far  as  it  was  good ;  that  it  would  lose  all 
the  swing,  the  rush,  the  energy  of  the  preposterous  and 
grotesque  original  ?  In  fact,  we  may  see  how  un- 
manageable is  this  classical  treatment  of  the  essentially 
absurd  in  Tennyson  himself.  The  humorous  passages 
in  The  Princess,  though  often  really  humorous  in  them- 
selves, always  appear  forced  and  feeble  because  they 
have  to  be  restrained  by  a  certain  metrical  dignity,  and 
the  mere  idea  of  such  restraint  is  incompatible  with  hu- 
mour. If  Browning  had  written  the  passage  which 
opens  The  Princess,  descriptive  of  the  "  larking  "  of  the 
villagers  in  the  magnate's  park,  he  would  have  spared 
us  nothing ;  he  would  not  have  spared  us  the  shrill  un- 
educated voices  and  the  unburied  bottles  of  ginger 
beer.  He  would  have  crammed  the  poem  with  uncouth 
similes  ;  he  would  have  changed  the  metre  a  hundred 
times ;  he  would  have  broken  into  doggerel  and  into 
rhapsody;  but  he  would  have  left,  when  all  is  said 
and  done,  as  he  leaves  in  that  paltry  fragment  of  the 
grumbling  organist,  the  impression  of  a  certain  eternal 
human  energy.  Energy  and  joy,  the  father  and  the 
mother  of  the  grotesque,  would  have  ruled  the  poem. 
We  should  have  felt  of  that  rowdy  gathering  little  but 
the  sensation  of  which  Mr.  Henley  writes  — 

"  Praise  the  generous  gods  for  giving, 

In  this  world  of  sin  and  strife, 
With  some  little  time  for  living, 
Unto  each  the  joy  of  life," 

the  thought  that  every  wise  man  has  when  looking  at 
a  Bank  Holiday  crowd  at  Margate. 

To  ask  why  Browning  enjoyed   this  perverse  and 
fantastic  style  most  would  be  to  go  very  deep  into  his 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS   A  LITERARY  ARTIST  149 

spirit  indeed,  probably  a  great  deal  deeper  than  it  is 
possible  to  go.  But  it  is  worth  while  to  suggest  ten- 
tatively the  general  function  of  the  grotesque  in  art 
generally  and  in  his  art  in  particular.  There  is  one 
very  curious  idea  into  which  we  have  been  hypnotised 
by  the  more  eloquent  poets,  and  that  is  that  nature  in 
the  sense  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  the  country  is 
a  thing  entirely  stately  and  beautiful  as  those  terms 
are  commonly  understood.  The  whole  world  of  the 
fantastic,  all  things  top-heavy,  lop-sided,  and  non- 
sensical are  conceived  as  the  work  of  man,  gargoyles, 
German  jugs,  Chinese  pots,  political  caricatures,  bur- 
lesque epics,  the  pictures  of  Mr.  Aubrey  Beardsley  and 
the  puns  of  Kobert  Browning.  But  in  truth  a  part,  and 
a  very  large  part,  of  the  sanity  and  power  of  nature  lies 
in  the  fact  that  out  of  her  comes  all  this  instinct  of 
caricature.  Nature  may  present  itself  to  the  poet  too 
often  as  consisting  of  stars  and  lilies ;  but  these  are 
not  poets  who  live  in  the  country ;  they  are  men  who 
go  to  the  country  for  inspiration  and  could  no  more 
live  in  the  country  than  they  could  go  to  bed  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  Men  who  live  in  the  heart  of 
nature,  farmers  and  peasants,  know  that  nature  means 
cows  and  pigs,  and  creatures  more  humorous  than  can 
be  found  in  a  whole  sketch-book  of  Callot.  And  the 
element  of  the  grotesque  in  art,  like  the -element  of 
the  grotesque  in  nature,  means,  in  the  main,  energy, 
the  energy  which  takes  its  own  forms  and  goes  its  own 
way.  Browning's  verse,  in  so  far  as  it  is  grotesque,  is 
not  complex  or  artificial ;  it  is  natural  and  in  the 
legitimate  tradition  of  nature.  The  verse  sprawls  like 
the  trees,  dances  like  the  dust ;  it  is'  ragged  like  the 
thunder-cloud,  it  is  top-heavy,  like  the  toadstool. 


160  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

Energy  which  disregards  the  standard  of  classical  art 
is  in  nature  as  it  is  in  Browning.  The  same  sense  of  the 
uproarious  force  in  things  which  makes  Browning  dwell 
on  the  oddity  of  a  fungus  or  a  jellyfish  makes  him 
dwell  on  the  oddity  of  a  philosophical  idea.  Here,  for 
example,  we  have  a  random  instance  from  "  The  Eng- 
lishman in  Italy  "  of  the  way  in  which  Browning,  when 
he  was  most  Browning,  regarded  physical  nature. 

"  And  pitch  down  his  basket  before  us, 

All  trembling  alive 
With  pink  and  gray  jellies,  your  sea-fruit ; 

You  touch  the  strange  lumps, 
And  mouths  gape  there,  eyes  open,  all  manner 

Of  horns  and  of  humps, 
Which  only  the  fisher  looks  grave  at." 

Nature  might  mean  flowers  to  Wordsworth  and  grass 
to  Walt  Whitman,  but  to  Browning  it  really  meant 
such  things  as  these,  the  monstrosities  and  living 
mysteries  of  the  sea.  And  just  as  these  strange  things 
meant  to  Browning  energy  in  the  physical  world,  so 
strange  thoughts  and  strange  images  meant  to  him 
energy  in  the  mental  world.  When,  in  one  of  his  later 
poems,  the  professional  mystic  is  seeking  in  a  supreme 
moment  of  sincerity  to  explain  that  small  things  may 
be  filled  with  God  as  well  as  great,  he  uses  the  very 
same  kind  of  image,  the  image  of  a  shapeless  sea-beast, 
to  embody  that  noble  conception. 

"  The  Name  comes  close  behind  a  stomach-cyst, 
The  simplest  of  creations,  just  a  sac 
That's  mouth,  heart,  legs,  and  belly  at  once,  yet  lives 
And  feels,  and  could  do  neither,  we  conclude, 
If  simplified  still  further  one  degree." 

(SLUDGE.) 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS   A  LITERARY  ARTIST  161 

These  bulbous,  indescribable  sea-goblins  are  the 
first  thing  on  which  the  eye  of  the  poet  lights  in 
looking  on  a  landscape,  and  the  last  in  the  significance 
of  which  he  trusts  in  demonstrating  the  mercy  of  the 
Everlasting. 

There  is  another  and  but  slightly  different  use  of  the 
grotesque,  but  which  is  definitely  valuable  in  Brown- 
ing's poetry,  and  indeed  in  all  poetry.  To  present  a 
matter  in  a  grotesque  manner  does  certainly  tend  to 
touch  the  nerve  of  surprise  and  thus  to  draw  attention 
to  the  intrinsically  miraculous  character  of  the  object 
itself.  It  is  difficult  to  give  examples  of  the  proper 
use  of  grotesqueness  without  becoming  too  grotesque. 
But  we  should  all  agree  that  if  St.  Paul's  Cathedral 
were  suddenly  presented  to  us  upside  down  we  should, 
for  the  moment,  be  more  surprised  at  it,  and  look  at  it 
more  than  we  have  done  all  the  centuries  during  which 
it  has  rested  on  its  foundations.  Now  it  is  the  supreme 
function  of  the  philosopher  of  the  grotesque  to  make 
the  world  stand  on  its  head  that  people  may  look  at  it. 
If  we  say  "  a  man  is  a  man  "  we  aAvaken  no  sense  of 
the  fantastic,  however  much  we  ought  to,  but  if  we  say, 
in  the  language  of  the  old  satirist,  "  that  man  is  a  two- 
legged  bird,  without  feathers,'1  the  phrase  does,  for  a 
moment,  make  us  look  at  man  from  the  outside  and 
give  us  a  thrill  in  his  presence.  When  the  author  of 
the  Book  of  Job  insists  upon  the  huge,  half-witted, 
apparently  unmeaning  magnificence  and  might  of  Behe- 
moth, the  hippopotamus,  he  is  appealing  precisely  to 
this  sense  of  wonder  provoked  by  the  grotesque. 
"  Canst  thou  play  with  him  as  with  a  bird,  canst  thou 
bind  him  for  thy  maidens  ?  "  he  says  in  an  admirable 
passage.  The  notion  of  the  hippopotamus  as  a  house- 


152  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

hold  pet  is  curiously  in  the  spirit  of  the  humour  of 
Browning. 

But  when  it  is  clearly  understood  that  Browning's 
love  of  the  fantastic  in  style  was  a  perfectly  serious 
artistic  love,  when  we  understand  that  he  enjoyed 
working  in  that  style,  as  a  Chinese  potter  might  enjoy 
making  dragons,  or  a  mediaeval  mason  making  devils, 
there  yet  remains  something  definite  which  must  be  laid 
to  his  account  as  a  fault.  He  certainly  had  a  capacity 
for  becoming  perfectly  childish  in  his  indulgence  in 
ingenuities  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  poetry  at  all, 
such  as  puns,  and  rhymes,  and  grammatical  structures 
that  only  just  fit  into  each  other  like  a  Chinese  puzzle. 
Probably  it  was  only  one  of  the  marks  of  his  singular 
vitality,  curiosity,  and  interest  in  details.  He  was 
certainly  one  of  those  somewhat  rare  men  who  are 
fierily  ambitious  both  in  large  things  and  in  small. 
He  prided  himself  on  having  written  TJie  Ring  and 
the  Book,  and  he  also  prided  himself  on  knowing 
good  wine  when  he  tasted  it.  He  prided  himself  on 
re-establishing  optimism  on  a  new  foundation,  and  it 
is  to  be  presumed,  though  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to 
imagine,  that  he  prided  himself  on  such  rhymes  as  the 
following  in  Pacchiarotto :  — 

"  The  wolf,  fox,  bear,  and  monkey 
By  piping  advice  in  one  key  — 
That  his  pipe  should  play  a  prelude 
To  something  heaven-tinged  not  hell-hued, 
Something  not  harsh  but  docile, 
Man-liquid,  not  man-fossil." 

This  writing,  considered  as  writing,  can  only 
be  regarded  as  a  kind  of  joke,  and  most  probably 
Browning  considered  it  so  himself.  It  has  nothing  at 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS   A  LITERARY  ARTIST  163 

all  to  do  with  that  powerful  and  symbolic  use  of  the 
grotesque  which  may  be  found  in  such  admirable 
passages  as  this  from  "  Holy  Cross  Day  "  :  — 

"  Give  your  first  groan  —  compunction's  at  work ; 
And  soft !  from  a  Jew  you  mount  to  a  Turk. 
Lo  !  Micah  —  the  self-same  beard  on  chin, 
He  was  four  times  already  converted  in  !  " 

This  is  the  serious  use  of  the  grotesque.  Through  it 
passion  and  philosophy  are  as  well  expressed  as  through 
any  other  medium.  But  the  rhyming  frenzy  of  Brown- 
ing has  no  particular  relation  even  to  the  poems  in 
which  it  occurs.  It  is  not  a  dance  to  any  measure ; 
it  can  only  be  called  the  horse-play  of  literature.  It 
may  be  noted,  for  example,  as  a  rather  curious  fact 
that  the  ingenious  rhymes  are  generally  only  mathe- 
matical triumphs,  not  triumphs  of  any  kind  of  asso- 
nance. "  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,"  a  poem  written 
for  children,  and  bound  in  general  to  be  lucid  and 
readable,  ends  with  a  rhyme  which  it  is  physically 
impossible  for  any  one  to  say  :  — 

"And,  whether  they  pipe  us  free,  fr6m  rats  or  frdm  mice, 
If  we've  promised  them  aught,  let  us  keep  our  promise." 

This  queer  trait  in  Browning,  his  inability  to  keep  a 
kind  of  demented  ingenuity  even  out  of  poems  in 
which  it  was  quite  inappropriate,  is  a  thing  which 
must  be  recognised,  and  recognised  all  the  more 
because  as  a  whole  he  was  a  very  perfect  artist,  and 
a  particularly  perfect  artist  in  the  use  of  the  grotesque. 
But  everywhere  when  we  go  a  little  below  the  surface 
in  Browning  we  find  that  there  was  something  in  him 
perverse  and  unusual  despite  all  his  working  normality 


154  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

and  simplicity.  His  mind  was  perfectly  wholesome, 
but  it  was  not  made  exactly  like  the  ordinary  mind. 
It  was  like  a  piece  of  strong  wood  with  a  knot  in  it. 

The  quality  of  what  can  only  be  called  buffoonery 
which  is  under  discussion  is  indeed  one  of  the  many 
things  in  which  Browning  was  more  of  an  Elizabethan 
than  a  Victorian.  He  was  like  the  Elizabethans  in 
their  belief  in  the  normal  man,  in  their  gorgeous  and 
over-loaded  language,  above  all  in  their  feeling  for 
learning  as  an  enjoyment  and  almost  a  frivolity.  But 
there  was  nothing  in  which  he  was  so  thoroughly 
Elizabethan,  and  even  Shakespearian,  as  in  this  fact, 
that  when  he  felt  inclined  to  write  a  page  of  quite 
uninteresting  nonsense,  he  immediately  did  so.  Many 
great  writers  have  contrived  to  be  tedious,  and  ap- 
parently aimless,  while  expounding  some  thought 
which  they  believed  to  be  grave  and  profitable ;  but 
this  frivolous  stupidity  had  not  been  found  in  any 
great  writer  since  the  time  of  Rabelais  and  the  time 
of  the  Elizabethans.  In  many  of  the  comic  scenes 
of  Shakespeare  we  have  precisely  this  elephantine 
ingenuity,  this  hunting  of  a  pun  to  death  through 
three  pages.  In  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  and  in 
Browning  it  is  no  doubt  to  a  certain  extent  the  mark 
of  a  real  hilarity.  People  must  be  very  happy  to  be 
so  easily  amused. 

In  the  case  of  what  is  called  Browning's  obscurity, 
the  question  is  somewhat  more  difficult  to  handle. 
Many  people  have  supposed  Browning  to  be  profound 
because  he  was  obscure,  and  many  other  people, 
hardly  less  mistaken,  have  supposed  him  to  be  obscure 
because  he  was  profound.  He  was  frequently  pro- 
found, he  was  occasionally  obscure,  but  as  a  matter 


vi.]          BROWNING  AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  155 

of  fact  the  two  have  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  each 
other.  Browning's  dark  and  elliptical  mode  of  speech, 
like  his  love  of  the  grotesque,  was  simply  a  charac- 
teristic of  his,  a  trick  of  his  temperament,  and  had 
little  or  nothing  to  do  with  whether  what  he  was 
expressing  was  profound  or  superficial.  Suppose,  for 
example,  that  a  person  well  read  in  English  poetry 
but  unacquainted  with  Browning's  style  were  earnestly 
invited  to  consider  the  following  verse  :  — 

"  Hobbs  hints  blue  —  straight  he  turtle  eats. 

Nobbs  prints  blue  —  claret  crowns  his  cup. 
Nokes  outdares  Stokes  in  azure  feats  — 

Both  gorge.     Who  fished  the  murex  up  ? 
What  porridge  had  John  Keats  ?  ' ' 

The  individual  so  confronted  would  say  without  hesi- 
tation that  it  must  indeed  be  an  abstruse  and  inde- 
scribable thought  which  could  only  be  conveyed  by 
remarks  so  completely  disconnected.  But  the  point 
of  the  matter  is  that  the  thought  contained  in  this 
amazing  verse  is  not  abstruse  or  philosophical  at  all, 
but  is  a  perfectly  ordinary  and  straightforward  com- 
ment, which  any  one  might  have  made  upon  an  obvious 
fact  of  life.  The  whole  verse  of  course  begins  to 
explain  itself,  if  we  know  the  meaning  of  the  word 
"  murex,"  which  is  the  name  of  a  sea-shell,  out  of 
which  was  made  the  celebrated  blue  dye  of  Tyre. 
The  poet  takes  this  blue  dye  as  a  simile  for  a  new 
fashion  in  literature,  and  points  out  that  Hobbs, 
iSTobbs,  etc.,  obtain  fame  and  comfort  by  merely  using 
the  dye  from  the  shell ;  and  adds  the  perfectly 
natural  comment :  — 

"...  Who  fished  the  murex  up  ? 
What  porridge  had  John  Keats  ?  " 


156  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

So  that  the  verse  is  not  subtle,  and  was  not  meant  to 
be  subtle,  but  is  a  perfectly  casual  piece  of  sentiment 
at  the  end  of  a  light  poem.  Browning  is  not  obscure 
because  he  has  such  deep  things  to  say,  any  more  than 
he  is  grotesque  because  he  has  such  new  things  to  say. 
He  is  both  of  these  things  primarily,  because  he  likes 
to  express  himself  in  a  particular  manner.  The  man- 
ner is  as  natural  to  him  as  a  man's  physical  voice,  and 
it  is  abrupt,  sketchy,  allusive,  and  full  of  gaps.  Here 
comes  in  the  fundamental  difference  between  Browning 
and  such  a  writer  as  George  Meredith,  with  whom  the 
Philistine  satirist  would  so  often  in  the  matter  of 
complexity  class  him.  The  works  of  George  Meredith 
are,  as  it  were,  obscure  even  when  we  know  what  they 
mean.  They  deal  with  nameless  emotions,  fugitive 
sensations,  subconscious  certainties  and  uncertainties, 
and  it  really  requires  a  somewhat  curious  and  un- 
familiar mode  of  speech  to  indicate  the  presence  of 
these.  But  the  great  part  of  Browning's  actual  senti- 
ments, and  almost  all  the  finest  and  most  literary  of 
them,  are  perfectly  plain  and  popular  and  eternal 
sentiments.  Meredith  is  really  a  singer  producing 
strange  notes  and  cadences  difficult  to  follow  becatise 
of  the  delicate  rhythm  of  the  song  he  sings.  Browning 
is  simply  a  great  demagogue,  with  an  impediment  in 
his  speech.  Or  rather,  to  speak  more  strictly,  Brown- 
ing is  a  man  whose  excitement  for  the  glory  of  the 
obvious  is  so  great  that  his  speech  becomes  disjointed 
and  precipitate:  he  becomes  eccentric  through  his 
advocacy  of  the  ordinary,  and  goes  mad  for  the  love 
of  sanity. 

If    Browning    and    George    Meredith    were    each 
describing  the  same  act,  they  might  both  be  obscure, 


VI.]          BROWNING   AS  A  LITERARY  ARTIST  167 

but  their  obscurities  would  be  entirely  different. 
Suppose,  for  instance,  they  were  describing  even  so 
prosaic  and  material  an  act  as  a  man  being  knocked 
downstairs  by  another  man  to  whom  he  had  given  the 
lie,  Meredith's  description  would  refer  to  something 
which  an  ordinary  observer  would  not  see,  or  at  least 
could  not  describe.  It  might  be  a  sudden  sense  of 
anarchy  in  the  brain  of  the  assaulter,  or  a  stupefaction 
and  stunned  serenity  in  that  of  the  object  of  the 
assault.  He  might  write,  "  Wainwood's  '  Men  vary  in 
veracity,'  brought  the  baronet's  arm  up.  He  felt 
the  doors  of  his  brain  burst,  and  Wainwood  a  swift 
rushing  of  himself  through  air  accompanied  with  a 
clarity  as  of  the  annihilated."  Meredith,  in  other 
words,  would  speak  queerly  because  he  was  describing 
queer  mental  experiences.  But  Browning  might  sim- 
ply be  describing  the  material  incident  of  the  man 
being  knocked  downstairs,  and  his  description  would 
run:  — 

"  What  then  ?     '  You  lie '  and  doormat  below  stairs 
Takes  bump  from  back." 

This  is  not  subtlety,  but  merely  a  kind  of  insane 
swiftness.  Browning  is  not  like  Meredith,  anxious  to 
pause  and  examine  the  sensations  of  the  combatants, 
nor  does  he  become  obscure  through  this  anxiety.  He 
is  only  so  anxious  to  get  his  man  to  the  bottom  of  the 
stairs  quickly  that  he  leaves  out  about  half  the  story. 

Many,  who  could  understand  that  ruggedness  might 
be  an  artistic  quality,  would  decisively,  and  in  most 
cases  rightly,  deny  that  obscurity  could  under  any 
conceivable  circumstances  be  an  artistic  quality.  But 
here  again  Browning's  work  requires  a  somewhat  more 
cautious  and  sympathetic  analysis.  There  is  a  certain 


158  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

kind  of  fascination,  a  strictly  artistic  fascination,  which 
arises  from  a  matter  being  hinted  at  in  such  a  way  as 
to  leave  a  certain  tormenting  uncertainty  even  at  the 
end.  It  is  well  sometimes  to  half  understand  a  poem 
in  the  same  manner  that  we  half  understand  the  world. 
One  of  the  deepest  and  strangest  of  all  human  moods, 
is  the  mood  which  will  suddenly  strike  us  perhaps  in 
a  garden  at  night,  or  deep  in  sloping  meadows,  the 
feeling  that  ..every  flower  and  leaf  has  just  uttered 
something  stupendously  direct  and  important,  and 
that  we  have  by  a  prodigy  of  imbecility  not  heard  or 
understood  it.  There  is  a  certain  poetic  value,  and 
that  a  genuine  one,  in  this  sense  of  having  missed  the 
full  meaning  of  things.  There  is  beauty,  not  only  in 
wisdom,  but  in  this  dazed  and  dramatic  ignorance. 

But  in  truth  it  is  very  difficult  to  keep  pace  with  all 
the  strange  and  unclassified  artistic  merits  of  Brown- 
ing. He  was  always  trying  experiments  ;  sometimes 
he  failed,  producing  clumsy  and  irritating  metres,  top- 
heavy  and  over-concentrated  thought.  Far  more  often 
he  triumphed,  producing  a  crowd  of  boldly  designed 
poems,  every  one  of  which  taken  separately  might 
have  founded  an  artistic  school.  But  whether  suc- 
cessful or  unsuccessful,  he  never  ceased  from  his  fierce 
hunt  after  poetic  novelty.  He  never  became  a  con- 
servative. The  last  book  he  published  in  his  lifetime, 
Parleyings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in  their 
Day,  was  a  new  poem,  and  more  revolutionary  than 
Paracelsus.  This  is  the  true  light  in  which  to  regard 
Browning  as  an  artist.  He  had  determined  to  leave 
no  spot  of  the  cosmos  unadorned  by  his  poetry  which 
he  could  find  it  possible  to  adorn.  An  admirable 
example  can  be  found  in  that  splendid  poem  "  Childe 


vi.]          BROWNING   AS   A   LITERARY  ARTIST  159 

Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower  Came."  It  is  the  hint  of 
an  entirely  new  and  curious  type  of  poetry,  the  poetry 
of  the  shabby  and  hungry  aspect  of  the  earth  itself. 
Daring  poets  who  wished  to  escape  from  conventional 
gardens  and  orchards  had  long  been  in  the  habit  of 
celebrating  the  poetry  of  rugged  and  gloomy  land- 
scapes, but  Browning  is  not  content  with  this.  He 
insists  upon  celebrating  the  poetry  of  mean  landscapes. 
That  sense  of  scrubbiness  in  nature,  as  of  a  man  un- 
shaved,  had  never  been  conveyed  with  this  enthusiasm 
and  primeval  gusto  before. 

"  If  there  pushed  any  ragged  thistle-stalk 

Above  its  mates,  the  head  was  chopped  ;   the  bents 
Were  jealous  else.     What  made  those  holes  and  rents 
In  the  dock's  harsh  swarth  leaves,  bruised  as  to  baulk 
All  hope  of  greenness  ?  'tis  a  brute  must  walk 
Fashing  their  life  out,  with  a  brute's  intents." 

This  is  a  perfect  realisation  of  that  eerie  sentiment 
which  conies  upon  us,  not  so  often  among  mountains 
and  water-falls,  as  it  does  on  some  half-starved  common 
at  twilight,  or  in  walking  down  some  grey  mean  street. 
It  is  the  song  of  the  beauty  of  refuse ;  and  Browning 
was  the  first  to  sing  it.  Oddly  enough  it  has  been 
one  of  the  poems  about  which  most  of  those  pedantic 
and  trivial  questions  have  been  asked,  which  are  asked 
invariably  by  those  who  treat  Browning  as  a  science 
instead  of  a  poet,  "What  does  the  poem  of  Childe 
Roland  mean  ? "  The  only  genuine  answer  to  this 
is,  "  What  does  anything  mean  ?  "  Does  the  earth 
mean  nothing  ?  Do  grey  skies  and  wastes  covered 
with  thistles  mean  nothing  ?  Does  an  old  horse 
turned  out  to  graze  mean  nothing  ?  If  it  does,  there 
is  but  one  further  truth  to  be  added  —  that  everything 
means  nothing. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  RING  AND   THE  BOOK 

WHEN  we  have  once  realised  the  great  conception  of 
the  plan  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  the  studying  of  a 
single  matter  from  nine  different  standpoints,  it  be- 
comes exceedingly  interesting  to  notice  what  these 
standpoints  are ;  what  figures  Browning  has  selected 
as  voicing  the  essential  and  distinct  versions  of  the 
case.  One  of  the  ablest  and  most  sympathetic  of  all 
the  critics  of  Browning,  Mr.  Augustine  Birrell,  has 
said  in  one  place  that  the  speeches  of  the  two  advocates 
in  The  Ring  and  the  Book  will  scarcely  be  very  inter- 
esting to  the  ordinary  reader.  However  that  may  be, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  a  great  number  of  the 
readers  of  Browning  think  them  beside  the  mark  and 
adventitious.  But  it  is  exceedingly  dangerous  to  say 
that  anything  in  Browning  is  irrelevant  or  unnecessary. 
We  are  apt  to  go  on  thinking  so  until  some  mere  trifle 
puts  the  matter  in  a  new  light,  and  the  detail  that 
seemed  meaningless  springs  up  as  almost  the  central 
pillar  of  the  structure.  In  the  successive  monologues 
of  his  poem,  Browning  is  endeavouring  to  depict  the 
various  strange  ways  in  which  a  fact  gets  itself  pre- 
sented to  the  world.  In  every  question  there  are 
partisans  who  bring  cogent  and  convincing  arguments 
for  the  right  side ;  there  are  also  partisans  who  bring 

160 


CHAP,  vii.]        THE  RING  AND   THE  BOOK  161 

cogent  and  convincing  arguments  for  the  wrong  side. 
But  over  and  above  these,  there  does  exist  in  every 
great  controversy  a  class  of  more  or  less  official 
partisans  who  are  continually  engaged  in  defending 
each  cause  by  entirely  inappropriate  arguments.  They 
do  not  know  the  real  good  that  can  be  said  for  the 
good  cause,  nor  the  real  good  that  can  be  said  for 
the  bad  one.  They  are  represented  by  the  animated, 
learned,  eloquent,  ingenious,  and  entirely  futile  and 
impertinent  arguments  of  Juris  Doctor  Bottinius  and 
Dominus  Hyacinthus  de  Archangelis.  These  two  men 
brilliantly  misrepresent,  not  merely  each  other's  cause, 
but  their  own  cause.  The  introduction  of  them  is  one 
of  the  finest  and  most  artistic  strokes  in  TJie  Ring  and 
the  Book. 

We  can  see  the  matter  best  by  taking  an  imaginary 
parallel.  Suppose  that  a  poet  of  the  type  of  Browning 
lived  some  centuries  hence  and  found  in  some  cause 
celebre  of  our  day,  such  as  the  Parnell  Commission,  an 
opportunity  for  a  work  similar  in  its  design  to  TJie 
Ring  and  the  Book.  The  first  monologue,  which  would 
be  called  "  Half-London,"  would  be  the  arguments  of  an 
ordinary  educated  and  sensible  Unionist  who  believed 
that  there  really  was  evidence  that  the  Nationalist 
movement  in  Ireland  was  rooted  in  crime  and  public 
panic.  The  "  Other  half -London  "  would  be  the  utter- 
ance of  an  ordinary  educated  and  sensible  Home  Ruler, 
who  thought  that  in  the  main  Nationalism  was  one  dis- 
tinct symptom,  and  crime  another,  of  the  same  poison- 
ous and  stagnant  problem.  The  "  Tertium  Quid  "  would 
be  some  detached  intellectual,  committed  neither  to 
Nationalism  nor  to  Unionism,  possibly  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw,  who  would  make  a  very  entertaining  Browning 


162  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

monologue.  Then  of  course  would  come  the  speeches 
of  the  great  actors  in  the  drama,  the  icy  anger  of 
Parnell,  the  shuffling  apologies  of  Pigott.  But  we 
should  feel  that  the  record  was  incomplete  without 
another  touch  which  in  practice  has  so  much  to  do 
with  the  confusion  of  such  a  question.  Bottinius  and 
Hyacinthus  de  Archangelis,  the  two  cynical  profes- 
sional pleaders,  with  their  transparent  assumptions  and 
incredible  theories  of  the  case,  would  be  represented 
by  two  party  journalists ;  one  of  whom  was  ready  to  base 
his  case  either  on  the  fact  that  Parnell  was  a  Socialist 
or  an  Anarchist,  or  an  Atheist  or  a  Eoman  Catholic ; 
and  the  other  of  whom  was  ready  to  base  his  case  on 
the  theory  that  Lord  Salisbury  hated  Parnell  or  was 
in  league  with  him,  or  had  never  heard  of  him,  or  any- 
thing else  that  was  remote  from  the  world  of  real- 
ity. These  are  the  kind  of  little  touches  for  which 
we  must  always  be  on  the  look-out  in  Browning. 
Even  if  a  digression,  or  a  simile,  or  a  whole  scene  in 
a  play,  seems  to  have  no  point  or  value,  let  us  wait  a 
little  and  give  it  a  chance.  He  very  seldom  wrote 
anything  that  did  not  mean  a  great  deal. 

It  is  sometimes  curious  to  notice  how  a  critic,  pos- 
sessing no  little  cultivation  and  fertility,  will,  in  speak- 
ing of  a  work  of  art,  let  fall  almost  accidentally  some 
apparently  trivial  comment,  which  reveals  to  us  with 
an  instantaneous  and  complete  mental  illumination 
the  fact  that  he  does  not,  so  far  as  that  work  of  art  is 
concerned,  in  the  smallest  degree  understand  what  he 
is  talking  about.  He  may  have  intended  to  correct 
merely  some  minute  detail  of  the  work  he  is  studying, 
but  that  single  movement  is  enough  to  blow  him  and 
all  his  diplomas  into  the  air.  These  are  the  sensa- 


vii.]  THE  RING  AND    THE  BOOK  163 

tions  with  which  the  true  Browningite  will  regard  the 
criticism  made  by  so  many  of  Browning's  critics  and 
biographers  about  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  That 
criticism  was  embodied  by  one  of  them  in  the  words 
"  the  theme  looked  at  dispassionately  is  unworthy  of 
the  monument  in  which  it  is  entombed  for  eternity." 
Now  this  remark  shows  at  once  that  the  critic  does 
not  know  what  The  Ring  and  the  Book  means.  We 
feel  about  it  as  we  should  feel  about  a  man  who  said 
that  the  plot  of  Tristram  Shandy  was  not  well  con- 
structed, or  that  the  women  in  Kossetti's  pictures  did 
not  look  useful  and  industrious.  A  man  who  has 
missed  the  fact  that  Tristram  Shandy  is  a  game  of 
digressions,  that  the  whole  book  is  a  kind  of  practical 
joke  to  cheat  the  reader  out  of  a  story,  simply  has  not 
read  Tristram  Shandy  at  all.  The  man  who  objects 
to  the  Rossetti  pictures  because  they  depict  a  sad  and 
sensuous  day-dream,  objects  to  their  existing  at  all. 
And  any  one  who  objects  to  Browning  writing  his  huge 
epic  round  a  trumpery  and  sordid  police-case  has  in 
reality  missed  the  whole  length  and  breadth  of  the 
poet's  meaning.  The  essence  of  The  Ring  and  the 
Book  is  that  it  is  the  great  epic  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  because  it  is  the  great  epic  of  the  enormous 
importance  of  small  things.  The  supreme  difference 
that  divides  The  Ring  and  the  Book  from  all  the  great 
poems  of  similar  length  and  largeness  of  design  is 
precisely  the  fact  that  all  these  are  about  affairs 
commonly  called  important,  and  The  Ring  and  the 
Book  is  about  an  affair  commonly  called  contemptible. 
Homer  says,  "  I  will  show  you  the  relations  between 
man  and  heaven  as  exhibited  in  a  great  legend  of  love 
and  war,  which  shall  contain  the  mightiest  of  all 


164  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

mortal  warriors,  and  the  most  beautiful  of  all  mortal 
women."  The  author  of  the  Book  of  Job  says,  "I 
will  show  you  the  relations  between  man  and  heaven 
by  a  tale  of  primeval  sorrows  and  the  voice  of  God 
out  of  a  whirlwind."  Virgil  says,  "  I  will  show  you 
the  relations  of  man  to  heaven  by  the  tale  of  the 
origin  of  the  greatest  people  and  the  founding  of 
the  most  wonderful  city  in  the  world."  Dante  says, 
"  I  will  show  you  the  relations  of  man  to  heaven  by 
uncovering  the  very  machinery  of  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse, and  letting  you  hear  as  I  have  heard,  the  roar- 
ing of  the  mills  of  God."  Milton  says,  "  I  will  show 
you  the  relations  of  man  to  heaven  by  telling  you  of 
the  very  beginning  of  all  things,  and  the  first  shaping 
of  the  thing  that  is  evil  in  the  first  twilight  of  time." 
Browning  says,  "  I  will  show  you  the  relations  of  man 
to  heaven  by  telling  you  a  story  out  of  a  dirty  Italian 
book  of  criminal  trials  from  which  I  select  one  of 
the  meanest  and  most  completely  forgotten."  Until 
we  have  realised  this  fundamental  idea  in  The  Ring 
and  the  Book  all  criticism  is  misleading. 

In  this  Browning  is,  of  course,  the  supreme  embodi- 
ment of  his  time.  The  characteristics  of  the  modern 
movements  par  excellence  is  the  apotheosis  of  the  insig- 
nificant. Whether  it  be  the  school  of  poetry  which 
sees  more  in  one  cowslip  or  clover  top  than  in  forests 
and  waterfalls,  or  the  school  of  fiction  which  finds 
something  indescribably  significant  in  the  pattern 
of  a  hearth-rug,  or  the  tint  of  a  man's  tweed  coat, 
the  tendency  is  the  same.  Maeterlinck  stricken  still 
and  wondering  by  a  deal  door  half  open,  or  the  light 
shining  out  of  a  window  at  night ;  Zola  filling  note- 
books with  the  medical  significance  of  the  twitching 


vii.]  THE  RING  AND    THE  BOOK  165 

of  a  man's  toes,  or  the  loss  of  his  appetite;  Whitman 
counting  the  grass  and  the  heart-shaped  leaves  of 
the  lilac;  Mr.  George  Gissing  lingering  fondly  over 
the  third-class  ticket  and  the  dilapidated  umbrella; 
George  Meredith  seeing  a  soul's  tragedy  in  a  phrase 
at  the  dinner-table;  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  filling  three 
pages  with  stage  directions  to  describe  a  parlour ;  all 
these  men,  different  in  every  other  particular,  are 
alike  in  this,  that  they  have  ceased  to  believe  cer- 
tain things  to  be  important  and  the  rest  to  be  un- 
important. Significance  is  to  them  a  wild  thing 
that  may  leap  upon  them  from  any  hiding-place. 
They  have  all  become  terribly  impressed  with,  and 
a  little  bit  alarmed  at,  the  mysterious  powers  of 
small  things.  Their  difference  from  the  old  epic 
poets  is  the  whole  difference  between  an  age  that 
fought  with  dragons  and  an  age  that  fights  with 
microbes. 

This  tide  of  the  importance  of  small  things  is  flow- 
ing so  steadily  around  us  upon  every  side  to-day, 
that  we  do  not  sufficiently  realise  that  if  there  was 
one  man  in  English  literary  history  who  might  with 
justice  be  called  its  fountain  and  origin,  that  man  was 
Robert  Browning.  When  Browning  arose,  literature 
was  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  Tennysonian  poet. 
The  Tennysonian  poet  does  indeed  mention  trivialities, 
but  he  mentions  them  when  he  wishes  to  speak  trivi- 
ally; Browning  mentions  trivialities  when  he  wishes 
to  speak  sensationally.  Now  this  sense  of  the  terrible 
importance  of  detail  was  a  sense  which  may  be  said  to 
have  possessed  Browning  in  the  emphatic  manner  of 
a  demoniac  possession.  Sane  as  he  was,  this  one 
feeling  might  have  driven  him  to  a  condition  not  far 


166  EGBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

from  madness.  Any  room  that  he  was  sitting  in 
glared  at  him  with  innumerable  eyes  and  mouths 
gaping  with  a  story.  There  was  sometimes  no  back- 
ground and  no  middle  distance  in  his  mind.  A  human 
face  and  the  pattern  on  the  wall  behind  it  came  for- 
ward with  equally  aggressive  clearness.  It  may  be 
repeated,  that  if  ever  he  who  had  the  strongest  head 
in  the  world  had  gone  mad,  it  would  have  been 
through  this  turbulent  democracy  of  things.  If  he 
looked  at  a  porcelain  vase  or  an  old  hat,  a  cabbage, 
or  a  puppy  at  play,  each  began  to  be  bewitched  with 
the  spell  of  a  kind  of  fairyland  of  philosophers  :  the 
vase,  like  the  jar  in  the  Arabian  NigMs,  to  send  up  a 
smoke  of  thoughts  and  shapes  ;  the  hat  to  produce 
souls,  as  a  conjurer's  hat  produces  rabbits  ;  the  cabbage 
to  swell  and  overshadow  the  earth,  like  the  Tree  of 
Knowledge ;  and  the  puppy  to  go  off  at  a  scamper 
along  the  road  to  the  end  of  the  world.  Any  one  who 
has  read  Browning's  longer  poems  knows  how  con- 
stantly a  simile  or  figure  of  speech  is  selected,  not 
among  the  large,  well-recognised  figures  common  in 
I'oetry,  but  from  some  dusty  corner  of  experience,  and 
Low  often  it  is  characterised  by  smallness  and  a  certain 
quaint  exactitude  which  could  not  have  been  found 
in  any  more  usual  example.  Thus,  for  instance, 
Prince  Hohenstiel-Schivangau  explains  the  psycho- 
logical meaning  of  all  his  restless  and  unscrupulous 
activities  by  comparing  them  to  the  impulse  which 
has  just  led  him,  even  in  the  act  of  talking,  to  draw 
a  black  line  on  the  blotting-paper  exactly,  so  as  to 
connect  two  separate  blots  that  were  already  there. 
This  queer  example  is  selected  as  the  best  possible 
instance  of  a  certain  fundamental  restlessness  and 


vii.]  THE  RING   AND    THE  BOOK  167 

desire  to  add  a  touch  to  things  in  the  spirit  of  man. 
I  have  no  doubt  whatever  that  Browning  thought  of 
the  idea  after  doing  the  thing  himself,  and  sat  in 
a  philosophical  trance  staring  at  a  piece  of  inked 
blotting-paper,  conscious  that  at  that  moment,  and 
in  that  insignificant  act,  some  immemorial  monster 
of  the  mind,  nameless  from  the  beginning  of  the  world, 
had  risen  to  the  surface  of  the  spiritual  sea. 

It  is  therefore  the  very  essence  of  Browning's 
genius,  and  the  very  essence  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book, 
that  it  should  be  the  enormous  multiplication  of  a 
small  theme.  It  is  the  extreme  of  idle  criticism  to 
complain  that  the  story  is  a  current  and  sordid  story, 
for  the  whole  object  of  the  poem  is  to  show  what 
infinities  of  spiritual  good  and  evil  a  current  and 
sordid  story  may  contain.  "When  once  this  is  realised, 
it  explains  at  one  stroke  the  innumerable  facts  about 
the  work.  It  explains,  for  example,  Browning's  de- 
tailed and  picturesque  account  of  the  glorious  dust-bin 
of  odds  and  ends  for  sale,  out  of  which  he  picked  the 
printed  record  of  the  trial,  and  his  insistence  on  its 
cheapness,  its  dustiness,  its  yellow  leaves,  and  its 
crabbed  Latin.  The  more  soiled  and  dark  and  in- 
significant he  can  make  the  text  appear,  the  better  for 
his  ample  and  gigantic  sermon.  It  explains  again  the 
strictness  with  which  Browning  adhered  to  the  facts 
of  the  forgotten  intrigue.  He  was  playing  the  game 
of  seeing  how  much  was  really  involved  in  one  paltry 
fragment  of  fact.  To  have  introduced  large  quantities 
of  fiction  would  not  have  been  sportsmanlike.  TJie 
Ring  and  the  Book  therefore,  to  re-capitulate  the  view 
arrived  at  so  far,  is  the  typical  epic  of  our  age,  because 
it  expresses  the  richness  of  life  by  taking  as  a  text 


168  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

a  poor  story.  It  pays  to  existence  the  highest  of  all 
possible  compliments  —  the  great  compliment  which 
monarchy  paid  to  mankind  —  the  compliment  of  select- 
ing from  it  almost  at  random. 

But  this  is  only  the  first  half  of  the  claim  of  TJie 
Ring  and  the  Book  to  be  the  typical  epic  of  modern 
times.  The  second  half  of  that  claim,  the  second 
respect  in  which  the  work  is  representative  of  all 
modern  development,  requires  somewhat  more  careful 
statement.  Tlie  Ring  and  the  Book  is  of  course,  essen- 
tially speaking,  a  detective  story.  Its  difference  from 
the  ordinary  detective  story  is  that  it  seeks  to  estab- 
lish, not  the  centre  of  criminal  guilt,  but  the  centre  of 
spiritual  guilt.  But  it  has  exactly  the  same  kind  of 
excitiiig  quality  that  a  detective  story  has,  and  a  very 
excellent  quality  it  is.  But  the  element  which  is 
important,  and  which  now  requires  pointing  out,  is 
the  method  by  which  that  centre  of  spiritual  guilt 
and  the  corresponding  centre  of  spiritual  rectitude  is 
discovered.  In  order  to  make  clear  the  peculiar  char- 
acter of  this  method,  it  is  necessary  to  begin  rather 
nearer  the  beginning,  and  to  go  back  some  little  way 
in  literary  history. 

I  do  not  know  whether  anybody,  including  the 
editor  himself,  has  ever  noticed  a  peculiar  coincidence 
which  may  be  found  in  the  arrangement  of  the  lyrics 
in  Sir  Francis  Palgrave's  Golden  Treasury.  However 
that  may  be,  two  poems,  e^ch  of  them  extremely  well 
known,  are  placed  side  by  side,  and  their  juxtaposition 
represents  one  vast  revolution  in  the  poetical  manner 
of  looking  at  things.  The  first  is  Goldsmith's  almost 
too  well  known 


vii.]  THE  RING  AND    THE  BOOK  169 

"  When  lovely  woman  stoops  to  folly, 
And  finds  too  late  that  men  betray, 
What  charm  can  soothe  her  melancholy  ? 
What  art  can  wash  her  guilt  away  ?  " 

Immediately  afterwards  comes,  with  a  sudden  and 
thrilling  change  of  note,  the  voice  of  Burns :  — 

' '  Ye  banks  and  braes  o'  bonnie  Boon, 

How  can  ye  bloom  sae  fair  ? 
How  can  ye  chant,  ye  little  birds, 
And  I  sae  fu'  of  care  ? 

"  Thou'll  break  my  heart,  thou  bonny  bird, 

That  sings  upon  the  bough, 
Thou  minds  me  of  the  happy  days 
When  my  fause  Love  was  true." 

A  man  might  read  those  two  poems  a  great  many 
times  without  happening  to  realise  that  they  are  two 
poems  on  exactly  the  same  subject  —  the  subject  of 
a  trusting  woman  deserted  by  a  man.  And  the  whole 
difference  —  the  difference  struck  by  the  very  first  note 
of  the  voice  of  any  one  who  reads  them  —  is  this  funda- 
mental difference  that  Goldsmith's  words  are  spoken 
about  a  certain  situation,  and  Burns'  words  are  spoken 
in  that  situation. 

In  the  transition  from  one  of  these  lyrics  to  the 
other,  we  have  a  vital  change  in  the  conception  of  the 
functions  of  the  poet ;  a  change  of  which  Burns  was  in 
many  ways  the  beginning,  of  which  Browning,  in  a 
manner  that  we  shall  see  presently,  was  the  culmina- 
tion. 

Goldsmith  writes  fully  and  accurately  in  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  old  historic  idea  of  what  a  poet  was.  The 
poet,  the  rates,  was  the  supreme  and  absolute  critic  of 
human  existence,  the  chorus  in  the  human  drama;  he 


170  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

was,  to  employ  two  words,  which  when  analysed  are 
the  same  word,  either  a  spectator  or  a  seer.  He  took 
a  situation,  such  as  the  situation  of  a  woman  deserted 
by  a  man  before-mentioned,  and  he  gave,  as  Goldsmith 
gives,  his  own  personal  and  definite  decision  upon  it, 
entirely  based  upon  general  principles,  and  entirely 
from  the  outside.  Then,  as  in  the  case  of  Tlie  Golden 
Treasury,  he  has  no  sooner  given  judgment  than  there 
comes  a  bitter  and  confounding  cry  out  of  the  very 
heart  of  the  situation  itself,  which  tells  us  things 
which  would  have  been  quite  left  out  of  account  by  the 
poet  of  the  general  rule.  No  one,  for  example,  but  a 
person  who  knew  something  of  the  inside  of  agony 
would  have  introduced  that  touch  of  the  rage  of  the 
mourner  against  the  chattering  frivolity  of  nature, 
"  Thou'll  break  my  heart,  thou  bonny  bird."  We  find 
and  could  find  no  such  touch  in  Goldsmith.  We  have 
to  arrive  at  the  conclusion  therefore,  that  the  vates  or 
poet  in  his  absolute  capacity  is  defied  and  overthrown 
by  this  new  method  of  what  may  be  called  the  songs 
of  experience. 

Now  Browning,  as  he  appears  in  The  Ring  and  the 
Book,  represents  the  attempt  to  discover,  not  the  truth 
in  the  sense  that  Goldsmith  states  it,  but  the  larger 
truth  which  is  made  up  of  all  the  emotional  experi- 
ences, such  as  that  rendered  by  Burns.  Browning, 
like  Goldsmith,  seeks  ultimately  to  be  just  and 
impartial,  but  he  does  it  by  endeavouring  to  feel 
acutely  every  kind  of  partiality.  Goldsmith  stands 
apart  from  all  the  passions  of  the  case,  and  Brown- 
ing includes  them  all.  If  Browning  were  endeavouring 
to  do  strict  justice  in  a  case  like  that  of  the  deserted 
lady  by  the  banks  of  Doon,  he  would  not  touch  or 


vii.]  THE  RING  AND    THE  BOOK  171 

modify  in  the  smallest  particular  the  song  as  Burns 
sang  it,  but  he  would  write  other  songs,  perhaps 
equally  pathetic.  A  lyric  or  a  soliloquy  would  con- 
vince us  suddenly  by  the  mere  pulse  of  its  language, 
that  there  was  some  pathos  in  the  other  actors  in  the 
drama ;  some  pathos,  for  example,  in  a  weak  man,  con- 
scious that  in  a  passionate  ignorance  of  life  he  had 
thrown  away  his  power  of  love,  lacking  the  moral 
courage  to  throw  his  prospects  after  it.  We  should 
be  reminded  again  that  there  was  some  pathos  in  the 
position,  let  us  say,  of  the  seducer's  mother,  who  had 
built  all  her  hopes  upon  developments  which  a  misal- 
liance would  overthrow,  or  in  the  position  of  some  rival 
lover,  stricken  to  the  ground  with  the  tragedy  in  which 
he  had  not  even  the  miserable  comfort  of  a  locus  standi. 
All  these  characters  in  the  story,  Browning  would 
realise  from  their  own  emotional  point  of  view  before 
he  gave  judgment.  The  poet  in  his  ancient  office  held 
a  kind  of  terrestrial  day  of  judgment,  and  gave  men 
halters  and  halos ;  Browning  gives  men  neither  halter 
nor  halo,  he  gives  them  voices.  This  is  indeed  the 
most  bountiful  of  all  the  functions  of  the  poet,  that  he 
gives  men  words,  for  which  men  from  the  beginning  of 
the  world  have  starved  more  than  for  bread. 

Here  then  we  have  the  second  great  respect  in  which 
The  Ring  and  the  Book  is  the  great  epic  of  the  age.  It 
is  the  great  epic  of  the  age,  because  it  is  the  expression 
of  the  belief,  it  might  almost  be  said  of  the  discovery, 
that  no  man  ever  lived  upon  this  earth  without 
possessing  a  point  of  view.  ]S!"o  one  ever  lived  who 
had  not  a  little  more  to  say  for  himself  than  any 
formal  system  of  justice  was  likely  to  say  for  him.  It 
is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  how  entirely  the 


172  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

application  of  this  principle  would  revolutionise  the 
old  heroic  epic,  in  which  the  poet  decided  absolutely 
the  moral  relations  and  moral  value  of  the  characters. 
Suppose,  for  example,  that  Homer  had  written  the 
Odyssey  on  the  principle  of  The  Ring  and  the  Book,  how 
disturbing,  how  weird  an  experience  it  would  be  to 
read  the  story  from  the  point  of  view  of  Antinous ! 
Without  contradicting  a  single  material  fact,  without 
telling  a  single  deliberate  lie,  the  narrative  would  so 
change  the  whole  world  around  us,  that  we  should 
scarcely  know  we  were  dealing  with  the  same  place 
and  people.  The  calm  face  of  Penelope  would,  it  may 
be,  begin  to  grow  meaner  before  our  eyes,  like  a  face 
changing  in  a  dream.  She  would  begin  to  appear  as  a 
fickle  and  selfish  woman,  passing  falsely  as  a  widow, 
and  playing  a  double  game  between  the  attentions  of 
foolish  but  honourable  young  men,  and  the  fitful 
appearances  of  a  wandering  and  good-for-nothing 
sailor-husband ;  a  man  prepared  to  act  that  most  well- 
worn  of  melodramatic  roles,  the  conjugal  bully  and 
blackmailer,  the  man  who  uses  marital  rights  as  an 
instrument  for  the  worse  kind  of  wrongs.  Or,  again, 
if  we  had  the  story  of  the  fall  of  King  Arthur  told 
from  the  standpoint  of  Mordred,  it  would  only  be  a 
matter  of  a  word  or  two ;  in  a  turn,  in  the  twinkling  of 
an  eye,  we  should  find  ourselves  sympathising  with  the 
efforts  of  an  earnest  young  man  to  frustrate  the 
profligacies  of  high-placed  paladins  like  Lancelot  and 
Tristram,  and  ultimately  discovering,  with  deep  regret 
but  unshaken  moral  courage,  that  there  was  no  way  to 
frustrate  them,  except  by  overthrowing  the  cold  and 
priggish  and  incapable  egotist  who  ruled  the  country, 
and  the  whole  artificial  and  bombastic  schemes  which 


vii.]  THE  EING  AND    THE  BOOK  173 

bred  these  moral  evils.  It  might  be  that  in  spite  of 
this  new  view  of  the  case,  it  would  ultimately  appear 
that  Ulysses  was  really  right  and  Arthur  was  really 
right,  just  as  Browning  makes  it  ultimately  appear 
that  Pompilia  was  really  right.  But  any  one  can  see 
the  enormous  difference  in  scope  and  difficulty  be- 
tween the  old  epic  which  told  the  whole  story  from 
one  man's  point  of  view,  and  the  new  epic  which  can- 
not come  to  its  conclusion,  until  it  has  digested  and 
assimilated  views  as  paradoxical  and  disturbing  as 
our  imaginary  defence  of  Antinous  and  apologia  of 
Mordred. 

One  of  the  most  important  steps  ever  taken  in  the 
history  of  the  world  is  this  step,  with  all  its  various 
aspects,  literary,  political,  and  social,  which  is  repre- 
sented by  TJie  Ring  and  the  Book.  It  is  the  step  of 
deciding,  in  the  face  of  many  serious  dangers  and  dis- 
advantages, to  let  everybody  talk.  The  poet  of  the 
old  epic  is  the  poet  who  had  learnt  to  speak ;  Browning 
in  the  new  epic  is  the  poet  who  has  learnt  to  listen. 
This  listening  to  truth  and  error,  to  heretics,  to  fools, 
to  intellectual  bullies,  to  desperate  partisans,  to  mere 
chatterers,  to  systematic  poisoners  of  the  mind,  is  the 
hardest  lesson  that  humanity  has  ever  been  set  to 
learn.  The  Ring  and  the  Book  is  the  embodiment  of 
this  terrible  magnanimity  and  patience.  It  is  the 
epic  of  free  speech. 

Free  speech  is  an  idea  which  has  at  present  all  the 
unpopularity  of  a  truism ;  so  that  we  tend  to  forget 
that  it  was  not  so  very  long  ago  that  it  had  the  more 
practical  unpopularity  which  attaches  to  a  new  truth. 
Ingratitude  is  surely  the  chief  of  the  intellectual  sins 
of  man.  He  takes  his  political  benefits  for  granted, 


174  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

just  as  he  takes  the  skies  and  the  seasons  for  granted. 
He  considers  the  calm  of  a  city  street  a  thing  as 
inevitable  as  the  calm  of  a  forest  clearing,  whereas 
it  is  only  kept  in  peace  by  a  sustained  stretch  and 
effort  similar  to  that  which  keeps  up  a  battle  or  a 
fencing  match.  Just  as  we  forget  where  we  stand 
in  relation  to  natural  phenomena,  so  we  forget  it  in 
relation  to  social  phenomena.  We  forget  that  the 
earth  is  a  star,  and  we  forget  that  free  speech  is  a 
paradox. 

It  is  not  by  any  means  self-evident  upon  the  face 
of  it  that  an  insitution  like  the  liberty  of  speech  is 
right  or  just.  It  is  not  natural  or  obvious  to  let  a 
man  utter  follies  and  abominations  which  you  believe 
to  be  bad  for  mankind  any  more  than  it  is  natural 
or  obvious  to  let  a  man  dig  up  a  part  of  the  public 
road,  or  infect  half  a  town  with  typhoid  fever.  The 
theory  of  free  speech,  that  truth  is  so  much  larger 
and  stranger  and  more  many-sided  than  we  know  of, 
that  it  is  very  much  better  at  all  costs  to  hear  every 
one's  account  of  it,  is  a  theory  which  has  been  justified 
upon  the  whole  by  experiment,  but  which  remains  a 
very  daring  and  even  a  very  surprising  theory.  It 
is  really  one  of  the  great  discoveries  of  the  modern 
time,  but  once  admitted  it  is  a  principle  that  does  not 
merely  affect  politics,  but  philosophy,  ethics,  and 
finally  poetry. 

Browning  was  upon  the  whole  the  first  poet  to  apply 
the  principle  to  poetry.  He  perceived  that  if  we  wish 
to  tell  the  truth  about  a  human  drama,  we  must  not 
tell  it  merely  like  a  melodrama,  in  which  the  villain 
is  villainous  and  the  comic  man  is  comic.  He  saw  that 
the  truth  had  not  been  told  until  he  had  seen  in  the 


vii.]  THE  RING  AND    THE  BOOK  175 

villain  the  pure  and  disinterested  gentleman  that  most 
villains  firmly  believe  themselves  to  be,  or  until  he 
had  taken  the  comic  man  as  seriously  as  it  is  the 
custom  of  comic  men  to  take  themselves.  And  in  this 
Browning  is  beyond  all  question  the  founder  of  the 
most  modern  school  of  poetry.  Everything  that  was 
profound,  everything,  indeed,  that  was  tolerable  in  the 
aesthetes  of  1880,  and  the  decadent  of  1890,  has  its 
ultimate  source  in  Browning's  great  conception  that 
every  one's  point  of  view  is  interesting,  even  if  it 
be  a  jaundiced  or  a  blood-shot  point  of  view.  He 
is  at  one  with  the  decadents,  in  holding  that  it  is 
emphatically  profitable,  that  it  is  emphatically  credit- 
able to  know  something  of  the  grounds  of  the  happi- 
ness of  a  thoroughly  bad  man.  Since  his  time  we  have 
indeed  been  somewhat  over-satisfied  with  the  moods  of 
the  burglar,  and  the  pensive  lyrics  of  the  receiver  of 
stolen  goods.  But  Browning,  united  with  the  decadents 
on  this  point,  of  the  value  of  every  human  testimony, 
is  divided  from  them  sharply  and  by  a  chasm  in 
another  equally  important  point.  He  held  that  it 
is  necessary  to  listen  to  all  sides  of  a  question  in  order 
to  discover  the  truth  of  it.  But  he  held  that  there 
was  a  truth  to  discover.  He  held  that  justice  was  a 
mystery,  but,  not  like  the  decadents,  that  justice  was 
a  delusion.  He  held,  in  other  words,  the  true 
Browning  doctrine,  that  in  a  dispute  every  one  was  to 
a  certain  extent  right ;  not  the  decadent  doctrine  that 
in  so  mad  a  place  as  the  world,  every  one  must  be  by 
the  nature  of  things  wrong. 

Browning's  conception  of  the  Universe  can  hardly 
be  better  expressed  than  in  the  old  and  pregnant  fable 
about  the  five  blind  men  who  went  to  visit  an  elephant. 


176  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP.  vn. 

One  of  them  seized  its  trunk,  and  asserted  that  an 
elephant  was  a  kind  of  serpent ;  another  embraced  its 
leg,  and  was  ready  to  die  for  the  belief  that  an.  elephant 
was  a  kind  of  tree.  In  the  same  way  to  the  man  who 
leaned  against  its  side  it  was  a  wall;  to  the  man  who 
had  hold  of  its  tail  a  rope,  and  to  the  man  who  ran 
upon  its  tusk  a  particularly  unpleasant  kind  of  spear 
This,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  whole  theology  and  philoso- 
phy of  Browning.  But  he  differs  from  the  psycho- 
logical decadents  and  impressionists  in  this  important 
point,  that  he  thinks  that  although  the  blind  men 
found  out  very  little  about  the  elephant,  the  elephant 
was  an  elephant,  and  was  there  all  the  time.  The 
blind  men  formed  mistaken  theories  because  an  ele- 
phant is  a  thing  with  a  very  curious  shape.  And 
Browning  firmly  believed  that  the  Universe  was  a 
thing  with  a  very  curious  shape  indeed.  No  blind 
poet  could  even  imagine  an  elephant  without  experi- 
ence, and  no  man,  however  great  and  wise,  could  dream 
of  God  and  not  die.  But  there  is  a  vital  distinction 
between  the  mystical  view  of  Browning,  that  the  blind 
men  are  misled  because  there  is  so  much  for  them  to 
learn,  and  the  purely  impressionist  and  agnostic  view 
of  the  modern  poet,  that  the  blind  men  were  misled 
because  there  was  nothing  for  them  to  learn.  To  the 
impressionist  artist  of  our  time  we  are  not  blind  men 
groping  after  an  elephant  and  naming  it  a  tree  or  a 
serpent.  We  are  maniacs,  isolated  in  separate  cells, 
and  dreaming  of  trees  and  serpents  without  reason 
and  without  result. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    BROWNING 

THE    great   fault   of    most   of    the   appreciation    of 
Browning  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  conceives  the  moral 
and  artistic  value  of  his  work  to  lie  in  what  is  called 
"the  message    of  Browning,"   or   "the    teaching   of 
Browning,"  or,  in  other  words,  in  the  mere  opinions 
of  Browning.     Now  Browning  had  opinions,  just  as 
he  had  a  dress-suit  or  a  vote  for  Parliament.     He  did 
not  hesitate  to  express  these  opinions  any  more  than 
he  would  have  hesitated  to  fire  off  a  gun,  or  open 
an  umbrella,  if  he  had  possessed  those  articles,  and 
realised  their  value.     For  example,  he  had,  as  his  stu- 
dents  and   eulogists   have  constantly   stated,  certain 
definite  opinions  about  the  spiritual  function  of  love,**"' 
or   the   intellectual    basis    of    Christianity.       Those  *•" 
opinions  were  very  striking  and  very  solid,  as  every-  * 
thing  was  which  came  out  of  Browning's  mind.     His 
two  great  theories  of  the  universe   may  be  expressed  • 
in    two    comparatively   parallel    phrases.  (  The   first 
was  what  may  be  called  the  hope  which  lies  in  the 
imperfection    of    man.)    The   characteristic   poem  of  w 
"Old  Pictures  in  Florence"  expresses  very  quaintly  V 
and  beautifully  the  idea  that  some  hope  may  always  V 
be  based  on  deficiency  itself ;  in  other  words,  that  in  V" 
so  far  as  man  is  a  one-legged  or  a  one-eyed  creature. 
N  177 


178  EGBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

there  is  something  about  his  appearance  which  indi- 
cates that  he    should  have  another  leg  and  another 
Veye.     The  poem  suggests  admirably  that  such  a  sense 
•"'of  incompleteness  may  easily  be  a  great  advance  upon 
*^a  sense  of   completeness,  that    the   part  may  easily 
(1     and  obviously  be  greater  than  the  whole.     And  from 
this  Browning  draws,  as  he  is  fully  justified  in  draw- 
ing, a  definite  hope  for  immortality  and  the  larger 
scale   of    life.       For    nothing   is    more    certain  than 
that  though  this  world  is    the   only  world  that  we 
have  known,  or  of  which  we  could  even  dream,  the 
fact  does  remain  that  we  have  named  it  "  a  strange 
world."     In  other  words,  we  have  certainly  felt  that 
this  world  did  not  explain  itself,  that  something  in 
its   complete   and   patent   picture  has   been  omitted. 
••And  Browning  was  right  in  saying  that  in_a  cosmos 
"•where  incompleteness  implies  completeness,  life  implies 
•"immortality.     This  then  was  the  first  of  the  doctrines 
/  or  opinions  of  Browning,  the  hope  that  lies  in  the 
imperfection  of  man.     The  second  of  the  great  Brown- 
ing doctrines  requires  some  audacity  to  express.      It 
•can  only  be  properly  stated    as   the  hope    that  lies 
*in  the   imperfection  of   God.      That  is   to  say,  that 
r  Browning  held  that  sorrow  and  self-denial,  if   they 
were  the  burdens  of    man,  were  also  his  privileges. 
He  held   that   these   stubborn   sorrows   and   obscure 
valours  might,  to  use  a  yet  more  strange  expression, 
have  provoked  the  envy  of  the  Almighty.     If  man  has 
self-sacrifice  and  God  has  none,  then  man  has  in  the 
'  Universe  a  secret  and  blasphemous  superiority.     And 

*  this  tremendous  story  of  a  Divine  jealousy  Browning 

*  reads  into  the  story  of  the  Crucifixion.    If  the  Creator 
had  not  been  crucified  He  would  not  have  been  as 


vni.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  179 

great  as  thousands  of  wretched  fanatics  among  His 
own  creatures.  It  is  needless  to  insist  upon  this 
point;  any  one  who  wishes  to  read  it  splendidly 
expressed  need  only  be  referred  to  "  Saul."  But  these 
are  emphatically  the  two  main  doctrines  or  opinions 
of  Browning  which  I  have  ventured  to  characterise 
roughly  as  the  hope  in  the  imperfection  of  man,  and 
more  boldly  as  the  hope  in  the  imperfection  of  God. 
They  are  great  thoughts,  thoughts  written  by  a  great 
man,  and  they  raise  noble  and  beautiful  doubts  on 
behalf  of  faith  which  the  human  spirit  will  never 
answer  or  exhaust.  But  about  them  in  connection 
with  Browning  there  nevertheless  remains  something 
to  be  added. 

Browning  was,  as  most  of  his  upholders  and  all  his 
opponents  say,  fan  optimist,  f  His  theory,  that  man's 
sense  of  his  own  imperfection  implies  a  design  of 
perfection,  is  a  very  good  argument  for  optimism. 
His  theory  that  man's  knowledge  of  and  desire  for 
self-sacrifice  implies  God's  knowledge  of  and  desire 
for  self-sacrifice  is  another  very  good  argument  for 
optimism.  But  any  one  will  make  the  deepest  and 
blackest  and  most  incurable  mistake  about  Browning 
who  imagines  that  his  optimism  was  founded  on 
any  arguments  for  optimism.  Because  he  had  a 
strong  intellect,  because  he  had  a  strong  power  of 
conviction,  he  conceived  and  developed  and  asserted 
these  doctrines  of  the  [incompleteness  of  Manrand  the 
/sacrifice  of  Omnipotence"!?  But  these  doctrirtes  were 
the  symptoms  of  his  optimism,  they  were  not  its 
origin,  fit  is  surely  obvious  that  no  one  can  be  ar- 
gued into  optimism  since  no  one  can  be  argued  into 
happiness??  Browning's  optimism  was  not  founded  on 


\ 


180  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

opinions  which  were  the  work  of  Browning,  but  on 
life  which  was  the  work  of  God.  One  of  Browning's 
most  celebrated  biographers  has  said,  that  something 
of  Browning's  theology  must  be  put  down  to  his 
possession  of  a  good  digestion.  The  remark  was,  of 
course,  like  all  remarks  touching  the  tragic  subject 
of  digestion,  intended  to  be  funny  and  to  convey  some 
kind  of  doubt  or  diminution  touching  the  value  of 
Browning's  faith.  But  if  we  examine  the  matter  with 
somewhat  greater  care  we  shall  see  that  it  is  indeed 
a  thorough  compliment  to  that  faith.  Nobody,  strictly 
speaking,  is  happier  on  account  of  his  digestion. 
He  is  happy  because  he  is  so  constituted  as  to  for- 
get all  about  it.  Nobody  really  is  convulsed  with 
delight  at  the  thought  of  the  ingenious  machinery 
which  he  possesses  inside  him;  the  thing  which 
delights  him  is  simply  the  full  possession  of  his 
own  human  body.  I  cannot  in  the  least  understand 
why  a  good  digestion — that  is  a  good  body — should 
not  be  held  to  be  as  mystic  a  benefit  as  a  sunset  or 
the  first  flower  of  spring.  But  there  is  about  digestion 
this  peculiarity  throwing  a  great  light  on  human 
pessimism,  that  it  is  one  of  the  many  things  which 
we  never  speak  of  as  existing  until  they  go  wrong. 
We  should  think  it  ridiculous  to  speak  of  a  man  as 
suffering  from  his  boots  if  we  meant  that  he  had  really 
no  boots.  But  we  do  speak  of  a  man  suffering  from 
digestion  when  we  mean  that  he  suffers  from  a  lack 
of  digestion.  In  the  same  way  we  speak  of  a  man 
suffering  from  nerves  when  we  mean  that  his  nerves 
are  more  inefficient  than  any  one  else's  nerves.  If 
any  one  wishes  to  see  how  grossly  language  can 
degenerate,  he  need  only  compare  the  old  optimistic 


viii.]  THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  181 

use  of  the  word  nervous,  which  we  employ  in  speaking 
of  a  nervous  grip,  with  the  new  pessimistic  use  of 
the  word,  which  we  employ  in  speaking  of  a  nervous 
manner.  And  as  digestion  is  a  good  thing  which 
sometimes  goes  wrong,  as  nerves  are  good  _things 
which  sometimes  go  wrong,  so  existence  itself  in  the 
eyes  of  Browning  and  all  the  great  optimists  is  a 
good  thing  which  sometimes  goes  wrong.  He  held 
himself  as  free  to  draw  his  inspiration  from  the  gift 
of  good  health  as  from  the  gift  of  learning  or  the 
gift  of  fellowship.  But  he  held  that  such  gifts  were  ^ 
in  life  innumerable  and  varied,  and  that  every  man, 
or  at  least  almost  every  man,  possessed  some  window 
looking  out  on  this  essential  excellence  of  things. 

Browning's  optimism  then,  since  we  must  continue 
to  use  this  somewhat  inadequate  word,  was  a  result 
of  experience — experience  which  is  for  some  mysteri- 
ous reason  generally  understood  in  the  sense  of  sad  or 
disillusioning  experience.  An  old  gentleman  rebuk- 
ing a  little  boy  for  eating  apples  in  a  tree  is  in  the 
common  conception  the  type  of  experience.  If  he  really 
wished  to  be  a  type  of  experience  he  would  climb  up 
the  tree  himself  and  proceed  to  experience  the  apples. 
Browning's  faith  was  founded  upon  joyful  experience,  ^ 
not  in  the  sense  that  he  selected  his  joyful  experiences  j 
and  ignored  his  painful  ones,  but  in  the  sense  that  his  * 
joyful  (experiences  selected  themselves^and  fetood  out 
in  his  memory  by  virtue  of  their  own  extraordinary 
intensity  of  colour.^  He  did  not  use  experience  in 
that  mean  and  pompous  sense  in  which  it  is  used  by 
the  worldling  advanced  in  years.  He  rather  used  it 
in  that  healthier  and  more  joyful  sense  in  which  it  is 
used  at  revivalist  meetings.  In  the  Salvation  Army 


182  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

a  man's  experiences  mean  his  experiences  of  the 
mercy  of  God,  and  to  Browning  the  meaning  was 
much  the  same.  But  the  revivalists'  confessions 
deal  mostly  with  experiences  of  prayer  and  praise; 
Browning's  dealt  pre-eminently  with  what  may  be 
called  his  own  subject,  the  experiences  of  love. 

And   this    quality    of    Browning's    optimism,    the 

kquality  of  detail,  is  also  a  very  typical  quality. 
Browning's  optimism  is  of  that  ultimate  and  unshake- 
able  order  that  is  founded  upon  the  absolute  sight, 
and  sound,  and  smell,  and  handling  of  things.  If  a 
man  had  gone  up  to  Browning  and  asked  him  with  all 
the  solemnity  of  the  eccentric,  "  Do  you  think  life  is 
worth  living?"  it  is  interesting  to  conjecture  what 
his  answer  might  have  been.  If  he  had  been  for  the 
moment  under  the  influence  of  the  orthodox  rational- 
istic deism  of  the  theologian  he  would  have  said, 
"Existence  is  justified  by  its  manifest  design,  its 
manifest  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,"  or,  in  other 
words,  "  Extete^nce  is  justified  by  its  completeness." 
If,  on  the  other  fomdjhe  had  been  influenced  by  his 
own  serious  intellectuaT^bfeeories  he  would  have  said, 
"  Existence  is  justified  by  itss^r  of  growth  and  doubt 

'fulness,"  or,  in  other  words,  "Existence  is  justified  by 
its  incompleteness."  But  if  he  had  not  been  influenced 
in  his  answer  either  by  the  accepted  opinions,  or  by 
his  own  opinions,  but  had  simply  answered  the  ques- 
tion "  Is  life  worth  living  ?  "  with  the  real,  vital  answer 
that  awaited  it  in  his  own  soul,  he  would  have  said  as 
likely  as  not,  "Crimson  toadstools  in  Hampshire." 
Some  plain,  glowing  picture  of  this  sort  left  on  his  mind 
would  be  his  real  verdict  on  what  the  universe  had 
meant  to  him.  To  his  traditions  jhjope  was  traced  to 


viii.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  188 


o  his  speculations  hope  was  traced  to  disorder^ 
But   to  Browning  himself  hope  was  traced  to  some- 
thing like  red  toadstools.     His  mysticism  was  not  of 
that  idle  and  wordy  type  which  believes  that  a  flower 
is  symbolical  of  life  ;  it  was  rather  of  that  deep  and 
eternal  type  which  believes  that  life,  a  mere  abstrac- 
tion, is  symbolical  of  a  flower.     With  him  the  great  f 
concrete  experiences  which  God  made  always  come  j 
first;  his  own  deductions  and  speculations  about  them/ 
always  second.     And  in  this  point  we  find  the  real 
peculiar  inspiration  of  his  very  original  poems. 

One  of  the  very  few  critics  who  seem  to  have  got 
near  to  the  actual  secret  of  Browning's  optimism  is 
Mr.  Santayana  in  his  most  interesting  book  Interpre- 
tations of  Poetry  and  Religion.  He,  in  contradistinction 
to  the  vast  mass  of  Browning's  admirers,  had  dis- 
covered what  was  the  real  root  virtue  of  Browning's 
poetry;  and  the  curious  thing  is,  that  having  dis- 
covered that  root  virtue,  he  thinks  it  is  a  vice.  He 
describes  the  poetry  of  Browning  most  truly  as  the 
poetry  of  barbarism,  by  which  he  means  the  poetry 
which  utters  the  primeval  and  indivisible  emotions. 
j  "  For  the  barbarian  is  the  man  who  regards  his  passions 
I  as  their  own  excuse  for  being,  who  does  not  domesti- 
I  cate  them  either  by  understanding  their  cause,  or  by 
conceiving  their  ideal  goal."  i  '"Whether  this  be~or  be 
not  a  good  definition  of  theTJarbarian,  it  is  an  excellent 
and  perfect  definition  of  the  poet.  It  might,  perhaps, 
be  suggested  that  barbarians,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  are 
generally  highly  traditional  and  respectable  persons 
who  would  not  put  a  feather  wrong  in  their  head-gear, 
and  who  generally  have  very  few  feelings  and  think 
very  little  about  those  they  have.  It  is  when  we  have 


184  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

.  grown  to  a  greater  and  more  civilised  stature  that  we 
begin  to  realise  and  put  to  ourselves  intellectually  the 
great  feelings  that  sleep  in  the  depths  of  us.  Thus 
it  is  that  the  literature  of  our  day  has  steadily 
advanced  towards  a  passionate  simplicity,  and  we 
become  more  primeval  as  the  world  grows  older  until 

>  Whitman  writes  huge  and  chaotic  psalms  to  express 
the  sensations  of  a  schoolboy  out  fishing,  and  Maeter- 
linck embodies  in  symbolic  dramas  the  feelings  of  a 
child  in  the  dark. 

Thus,  Mr.  Santayana  is,  perhaps,  the  most  valuable 
of  all  the  Browning  critics.  He  has  gone  out  of  his 
way  to  endeavour  to  realise  what  it  is  that  repels 
him  in  Browning,  and  he  has  discovered  the  fault 
which  none  of  Browning's  opponents  have  discov- 
ered. And  in  this  he  has  discovered  the  merit 
which  none  of  Browning's  admirers  have  discovered. 
Whether  the  quality  be  a  good  or  a  bad  quality, 
Mr.  Santayana  is  perfectly  right.  The  whole  of 
Browning's  poetry  does  rest  upon  primitive  feeling ; 
and  the  only  comment  to  be  added  is  that  so  does  the 
whole  of  every  one  else's  poetry.  Poetry  deals  entirely 
with  those  great  eternal  and  mainly  forgotten  wishes 
which  are  the  ultimate  despots  of  existence.  Poetry 

^-jpu&aentg  things  as  JJi£y__are_to_our  emotions,  not__as 
they  are  to  any  theory,  however  plausible,  or  any 
argument,  however  conclusive.  If  love  is  in  truth  a 
glorious  vision,  poetry  will  say  that  it  is  a  glorious 
vision,  and  no  philosophers  will  persuade  poetry  to 
say  that  it  is  the  exaggeration  of  the  instinct  of  sex. 
If  bereavement  is  a  bitter  and  continually  aching 
thing,  poetry  will  say  that  it  is  so,  and  110  philo- 
sophers will  persuade  poetry  to  say  that  it  is  an 


VIIL]  THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  185 

evolutionary  stage  of  great  biological  value.  And  here 
comes  in  the  whole  value  and  object  of  poetry,  that 
it  is  perpetually  challenging  all  systems  with  the  test 
of  a  terrible  sincerity.  The  practical  value  of  poetryt 
is  that  it  is  realistic  upon  a  point  upon  which  nothingX 
else  can  be  realistic,  the  point  of  the  actual  desires  of  ) 
man.  Ethics  is  the  science  of  actions,  but  poetry  is 
the  science  of  motives.  Some  actions  are  ugly,  and 
therefore  some  parts  of  ethics  are  ugly.  But  all 
motives  are  beautiful,  or  present  themselves  for  the 
moment  as  beautiful,  and  therefore  all  poetry  is 
beautiful.  If  poetry  deals  with  the  basest  matter, 
with  the  shedding  of  blood  for  gold,  it  ought  to  suggest 
the  gold  as  well  as  the  blood.  Only  poetry  can  realise 
motives,  because  motives  are  all  pictures  of  happiness. 
And  the  supreme  and  most  practical  value  of  poetry  is 
this,  that  in  poetry,  as  in  music,  a  note  is  struck  which 
expresses  beyond  the  power  of  rational  statement  a 
condition  of  mind,  and  all  actions  arise  from  a  con- 
dition of  mind.  Prose  can  only  use  a  large  and 
clumsy  notation  ;  it  can  only  say  that  a  man  is  miser- 
able, or  that  a  man  is  happy ;  it  is  forced  to  ignore 
that  there  are  a  million  diverse  kinds  of  misery 
and  a  million  diverse  kinds  of  happiness.  Poetry 
alone,  with  the  first  throb  of  its  metre,  can  tell  us 
whether  the  depression  is  the  kind  of  depression  that 
drives  a  man  to  suicide,  or  the  kind  of  depression 
that  drives  him  to  the  Tivoli.  Poetry  can  tell  us 
whether  the  happiness  is  the  happiness  that  sends 
a  man  to  a  restaurant,  or  the  much  richer  and  fuller 
happiness  that  sends  him  to  church. 

Now  the  supreme  value  of  Browning  as  an  optimist 
lies  in  this  that  we  have  been  examining,  that  beyond 


186  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

all  his  conclusions,  and  deeper  than  all  his  arguments, 
he  was  passionately  interested  in  and  in  love  with 
existence.  If  the  heavens  had  fallen,  and  all  the  waters 
1of  the  earth  run  with  blood,  he  would  still  have  been 
interested  in  existence,  if  possible  a  little  more  so.  He 
is  a  great  poet  of  human  joy  for  precisely  the  reason  of 
which  Mr.  Santayana  complains :  that  his  happiness 
is  primal,  and  beyond  the  reach  of  philosophy.  He  is 
something  far  more  convincing,  far  more  comforting, 
far-  more  religiously  significant  than  an  optimist:  he 
is  a  happy  man. 

This  happiness  he  finds,  as  all  men  must  find  happi- 
ness, in  his  own  way.  He  does  not  find  the  great 
part  of  his  joy  in  those  matters  in  which  most  poets 
find  felicity.  He  finds  much  of  it  in  those  matters  in 
which  most  poets  find  ugliness  and  vulgarity.  He  is 
to  a  considerable  extent  the  poet  of  towns.  "  Do  you 
care  for  nature  much  ? "  a  friend  of  his  asked  him. 
"  Yes,  a  great  deal,"  he  said,  "  but  for  human  beings 
a  great  deal  more."  Nature,  with  its  splendid  and 
soothing  sanity,  has  the  power  of  convincing  most 
poets  of  the  essential  worthiness  of  things.  There 
are  few  poets  who,  if  they  escaped  from  the  rowdiest 
waggonette  of  trippers,  could  not  be  quieted  again  and 
exalted  by  dropping  into  a  small  wayside  field.  The 
speciality  of  Browning  is  rather  that  he  would  have 
been  quieted  and  exalted  by  the  waggonette. 

To  _Browning,  probably  the  beginning  and  end  of  all 
optimism,  was  to  be  found  in  the  faces  in  the  street. 
To  him  they  were  all  masks  of  a  deity,  the  heads 
of  a  hundred-headed  Indian  god  of  nature.  Each  one 
of  them  looked  towards  some  quarter  of  the  heavens, 
not  looked  upon  by  any  other  eyes.  Each  one  of  them 


viii.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  187 

wore  some  expression,  some  blend  of  eternal  joy  and 
eternal  sorrow,  not  to  be  found  in  any  other  counte- 
nance. The  sense  of  the  absolute  sanctity  of  human 
difference  was  the  deepest  of  all  his  senses.  He  was 
hungrily  interested  in  all  human  things,  but  it  would 
have  been  quite  impossible  to  have  said  of  him  that  he 
loved  humanity.  He  did  not  love  humanity  but  men. 
His  sense  of  the  difference  between  one  man  and 
another  would  have  made  the  thought  of  melting 
them  into  a  lump  called  humanity  simply  loathsome 
and  prosaic.  It*would  have  been  to  him  like  playing 
four  hundred  beautiful  airs  at  once.  The  mixture 
would  not  combine  all,  it  would  lose  all.  Browning 


believed  that  to  every  man  that  ever  lived  upon  this 
earth  had  been  given  a  definite  and  peculiar  confi- 
cTence  of  U-od.  Each  one  of  us  was  engaged  on  secret 
service ;  each  one  of  us  had  a  peculiar  message ;  each 
one  oF  us  was  the  founder  of  a  religion.  Ul  that 
religion  our  thoughts,  our  faces,  our  bodies,  our  hats, 
our  boots,  our  tastes,  our  virtues,  and  even  our  vices, 
were  more  or  less  fragmentary  and  inadequate  ex- 
pressions. 

In  the  delightful  memoirs  of  that  very  remarkable 
man  Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  there  is  an  extremely 
significant  and  interesting  anecdote  about  Browning, 
the  point  of  which  appears  to  have  attracted  very  little 
attention.  Duffy  was  dining  with  Browning  and  John 
Forster,  and  happened  to  make  some  chance  allusion  to 
his  own  adherence  to  the  Koman  Catholic  faith,  and 
Forster  remarked,  half  jestingly,  that  he  did  not  sup- 
pose that  Browning  would  like  him  any  the  better  for 
that.  Browning  would  seem  to  have  opened  his  eyes 
with  some  astonishment.  He  immediately  asked  why 


188  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

Forster  should  suppose  him  hostile  to  the  Roman 
Church.  Forster  and  Duffy  replied  almost  simultane- 
ously, by  referring  to  "  Bishop  Blougram's  Apology," 
which  had  just  appeared,  and  asking  whether  the  por- 
trait of  the  sophistical  and  self-indulgent  priest  had 
not  been  intended  for  a  satire  on  Cardinal  Wiseman. 
"  Certainly,"  replied  Browning  cheerfully,  "  I  intended 
it  for  Cardinal  Wiseman,  but  I  don't  consider  it  a 
satire,  there  is  nothing  hostile  about  it."  This  is  the 
real  truth  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  what  may  be 
called  the  great  sophistical  monologues^vhich  Browning 
wrote  in  later  years.  They  are  not  satires  or  attacks 
upon  their  subjects,  they  are  not  even  harsh  and  un- 
feeling exposures  of  them.  \They  are  defences*7they 
say  or  are  intended  to  say  the  oest  that  can  be  s'aid  for 
the  persons  with  whom  they  deal.  But  very  few  people 
in  this  world  would  care  to  listen  to  the  real  defence 
of  their  own  characters.  The  real  defence,  the  defence 
which  belongs  to  the  Day  of  Judgment,  would  make 
such«damaging  admissions,  would  clear  away  so  many 
artificial  virtues,  would  tell  such  tragedies  of  weakness 
and  failure,  that  a  man  would  sooner  be  misunderstood 
and  censured  by  the  world  than  exposed  to  that  awful 
and  merciless  eulogy.  One  of  the  most  practically 
difficult  matters  which  arise  from  the  code  of  manners 
and  the  conventions  of  life,  is  that  we  cannot  properly 
justify  a  human  being,  because  that  justification  would 
involve  the  admission  of  things  which  may  not  con- 
ventionally be  admitted.  We  might  explain  and  make 
human  and  respectable,  for  example,  the  conduct  of 
some  old  fighting  politician,  who,  for  the  good  of  his 
party  and  his  country,  acceded  to  measures  of  which 
he  disapproved ;  but  we  cannot,  because  we  are  not 


vui.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  BROWNING  189 

allowed  to  admit  that  he  ever  acceded  to  measures  of 
which  he  disapproved.  We  might  touch  the  life  of 
many  dissolute  public  men  with  pathos,  aud  a  kiud 
of  defeated  courage  by  telling  the  truth  about  the  his- 
tory of  their  sins.  But  we  should  throw  the  world 
into  an  uproar  if  we  hinted  that  they  had  any.  Thus 
the  decencies  of  civilisation  do  not  merely  make  it 
impossible  to  revile  a  man,  they  make  it  impossible  to 
praise  him. 

Browning,  in  such  poems  as  "  Bishop  Blougranrs 
Apology,"  breaks  this  first  mask  of  goodness  in  order 
to  break  the  second  mask  of  evil,  and  gets  to  the  real 
goodness  at  last; "he  dethrones  a  saint  in  order  to 
humanise  a  scoundrel.*  This  is  one  typical  side  of  the 
real  optimism  of  Browning.  And  there  is  indeed  little 
danger  that  such  optimism  will  become  weak  and  sen- 
timental and  popular,  the  refuge  of  every  idler,  the 
excuse  of  every  ne'er-do-weel.  There  is  little  danger 
that  men  will  desire  to  excuse  their  souls  before  God 
by  presenting  themselves  before  men  as  such  snobs  as 
Bishop  Blougram,  or  such  dastards  as  Sludge  the 
Medium.  There  is  no  pessimism,  however  stern,  that 
is  so  stern  as  this  optimism ;  it  is  as  merciless  as  the 
mercy  of  God. 

It  is  true  that  in  this,  as  in  almost  everything  else 
connected  with  Browning's  character,  the  matter  can- 
not be  altogether  exhausted  by  such  a  generalisation 
as  the  above.  Browning's  was  a  simple  character,  and 
therefore  very  difficult  to  understand,  since  it  was 
impulsive,  unconscious,  and  kept  no  reckoning  of  its 
moods.  Probably  in  a  great  many  cases,  the  original 
impulse  which  led  Browning  to  plan  a  soliloquy  was  a 
kind  of  anger  mixed  with  curiosity ;  possibly  the  first 


190  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

charcoal  sketch  of  Blougram  was   a  caricature  of  a 
priest.     Browning,  as  we   have  said,  had  prejudices, 
V.     and  had  a  capacity  for  anger,  and  two  of  his  angriest 
\prejudices   were   against   a  certain  kind   of   worldly 
I  clericalism,  and  against  almost  every  kind  of  spirit- 
/  ualism.     But  as  he  worked  upon  the  portraits  at  least, 
1  a  new  spirit  began  to   possess  him,  and   he  enjoyed 
;   every  spirited  and  just  defence  the  men  could  make 
•  of  themselves,  like  triumphant  blows  in  a  battle,  and 
towards  the  end  would  come  the  full  revelation,  and 
Browning  would  stand  up  in  the  man's  skin  and  tes- 
tify to  the  man's  ideals.     However  this  may  be,  it  is 
worth  while  to  notice  one  very  curious  error  that  has 
arisen  in  connection  with  one  of  the  most  famous  of 
these  monologues. 

When  Eobert  Browning  was  engaged  in  that  some- 
what obscure  quarrel  with  the  spiritualist  Home,  it 
is  generally  and  correctly  stated  that  he  gained  a 
great  number  of  the  impressions  which  he  afterwards 
embodied  in  "Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium."  The  statement 
so  often  made,  particularly  in  the  spiritualist  accounts 
of  the  matter,  that  Browning  himself  is  the  original 
of  the  interlocutor  and  exposer  of  Sludge,  is  of  course 
merely  an  example  of  that  reckless  reading  from  which 
no  one  has  suffered  more  than  Browning,  despite  his 
students  and  societies.  The  man  to  whom  Sludge 
addresses  his  confession  is  a  Mr.  Hiram  H.  Horsfall, 
an  American,  a  patron  of  spiritualists,  and,  as  it  is 
more  than  once  suggested,  something  of  a  fool.  Nor 
is  there  the  smallest  reason  to  suppose  that  Sludge 
considered  as  an  individual  bears  any  particular  resem- 
blance to  Home  considered  as  an  individual.  But 
without  doubt  "  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium  "  is  a  general 


viii.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  BROWAING  191 

statement  of  the  view  of  spiritualism  at  which  Brown- 
ing had  arrived  from  his  acquaintance  with  Home  and 
Home's  circle.  And  about  that  view  of  spiritualism 
there  is  something  rather  peculiar  to  notice.  The 
poem,  appearing  as  it  did  at  the  time  when  the  in- 
tellectual public  had  just  become  conscious  of  the 
existence  of  spiritualism,  attracted  a  great  deal  of 
attention,  and  aroused  a  great  deal  of  controversy. 
The  spiritualists  called  down  thunder  upon  the 
head  of  the  poet,  whom  they  depicted  as  a  vulgar 
and  ribald  lampooner  who  had  not  only  com- 
mitted the  profanity  of  sneering  at  the  mysteries 
of  a  higher  state  of  life,  but  the  more  unpardonable 
profanity  of  sneering  at  the  convictions  of  his  own 
wife.  The  sceptics,  on  the  other  hand,  hailed  the 
poem  with  delight  as  a  blasting  exposure  of  spiritual- 
ism, and  congratulated  the  poet  on  making  himself 
the  champion  of  the  sane  and  scientific  view  of  magic. 
Which  of  these  two  parties  was  right  about  the 
question  of  attacking  the  reality  of  spiritualism  it  is 
neither  easy  nor  necessary  to  discuss.  For  the  simple 
truth,  which  neither  of  the  two  parties  and  none  of 
the  students  of  Browning  seem  to  have  noticed,  is 
that  "  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium "  is  not  an  attack  upon 
spiritualism.  It  would  be  a  great  deal  nearer  the 
truth,  though  not  entirely  the  truth,  to  call  it  a 
justification  of  spiritualism.  The  whole  essence  of 
Browning's  method  is  involved  in  this  matter,  and  the 
whole  essence  of  Browning's  method  is  so  vitally  mis- 
understood that  to  say  that  "  Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium" 
is  something  like  a  defence  of  spiritualism  will  bear 
on  the  face  of  it  the  appearance  of  the  most  empty 
and  perverse  of  paradoxes.  But  so,  when  we  have 


192  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

comprehended  Browning's  spirit,  the  fact  will  be  found 
to  be. 

The  general  idea  is  that  Browning  must  have  in- 
tended "  Sludge  "  for  an  attack  on  spiritual  phenomena, 
because  the  medium  in  that  poem  is  made  a  vulgar 
and  contemptible  mountebank,  because  his  cheats  are 
quite  openly  confessed,  and  he  himself  put  into  every 
ignominious  situation,  detected,  exposed,  throttled, 
horsewhipped,  and  forgiven.  To  regard  this  deduc- 
tion as  sound  is  to  misunderstand  Browning  at  the 
very  start  of  every  poem  that  he  ever  wrote.  There 
is  nothing  that  the  man  loved  more,  nothing  that 
deserves  more  emphatically  to  be  called  a  speciality 
of  Browning,  than  the  utterance  of  large  and  noble 
truths  by  the  lips  of  mean  and  grotesque  human 
beings.  In  his  poetry  praise  and  wisdom  were  per- 
fected not  only  out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  suck- 
lings, but  out  of  the  mouths  of  swindlers  and  snobs. 
Now  what,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  is  the  outline  and 
development  of  the  poem  of  "  Sludge  "  ?  The  climax 
of  the  poem,  considered  as  a  work  of  art,  is  so  fine 
that  it  is  quite  extraordinary  that  any  one  should 
have  missed  the  point  of  it,  since  it  is  the  whole  point 
of  the  monologue.  Sludge  the  Medium  has  been 
caught  out  in  a  piece  of  unquestionable  trickery,  a 
piece  of  trickery  for  which  there  is  no  conceivable 
explanation  or  palliation  which  will  leave  his  moral 
character  intact.  He  is  therefore  seized  with  a  sudden 
resolution,  partly  angry,  partly  frightened,  and  partly 
humorous,  to  become  absolutely  frank,  and  to  tell 
the  whole  truth  about  himself  for  the  first  time  not 
only  to  his  dupe,  but  to  himself.  He  excuses  himself 
for  the  earlier  stages  of  the  trickster's  life  by  a  survey 


via.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  BROWNING  193 

of  the  border-land  between  truth  and  fiction,  not  by 
any  means  a  piece  of  sophistry  or  cynicism,  but  a 
perfectly  fair  statement  of  an  ethical  difficulty  which 
does  exist.  There  are  some  people  who  think  that 
it  must  be  immoral  to  admit  that  there  are  any 
doubtful  cases  of  morality,  as  if  a  man  should  refrain 
from  discussing  the  precise  boundary  at  the  upper 
end  of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  for  fear  the  inquiry 
should  shake  his  belief  in  the  existence  of  North 
America.  People  of  this  kind  quite  consistently  think 
Sludge  to  be  merely  a  scoundrel  talking  nonsense. 
It  may  be  remembered  that  they  thought  the  same 
thing  of  Newman.  It  is  actually  supposed,  apparently 
in  the  current  use  of  words,  that  casuistry  is  the 
name  of  a  crime ;  it  does  not  appear  to  occur  to 
people  that  casuistry  is  a  science,  and  about  as  much 
a  crime  as  botany.  This  tendency  to  casuistry  in 
Browning's  monologues  has  done  much  towards  estab- 
lishing for  him  that  reputation  for  pure  intellectualism 
which  has  done  him  so  much  harm.  But  casuistry 
in  this  sense  is  not  a  cold  and  analytical  thing,  but 
a  very  warm  and  sympathetic  thing.  To  know  what 
combinations  of  excuse  might  justify  a  man  in  man- 
slaughter or  bigamy,  is  not  to  have  a  callous  indiffer- 
ence to  virtue;  it  is  rather  to  have  so  ardent  an 
admiration  for  virtue  as  to  seek  it  in  the  remotest 
desert  and  the  darkest  incognito. 

This  is  emphatically  the  case  with  the  question  of 
truth  and  falsehood  raised  in  "  Sludge  the  Medium." 
To  say  that  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to  tell  at  what 
point  the  romancer  turns  into  the  liar  is  not  to  state  a 
cynicism,  but  a  perfectly  honest  piece  of  human 
observation.  To  think  that  such  a  view  involves  the 


194  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAI>. 

negation  of  honesty  is  like  thinking  that  red  is  green, 
because  the  two  fade  into  each  other  in  the  colours 
of  the  rainbow.  It  is  really  difficult  to  decide  when 
we  come  to  the  extreme  edge  of  veracity,  when  and 
when  not  it  is  permissible  to  create  an  illusion.  A 
standing  example,  for  instance,  is  the  case  of  the  fairy- 
tales. We  think  a  father  entirely  pure  and  benevolent 
when  he  tells  his  children  that  a  beanstalk  grew  up 
into  heaven,  and  a  pumpkin  turned  into  a  coach. 
We  should  consider  that  he  lapsed  from  purity  and 
benevolence  if  he  told  his  children  that  in  walking 
home  that  evening  he  had  seen  a  beanstalk  grow  half- 
way up  the  church,  or  a  pumpkin  grow  as  large  as  a 
wheelbarrow.  Again,  few  people  would  object  to  that 
general  privilege  whereby  it  is  permitted  to  a  person 
in  narrating  even  a  true  anecdote  to  work  up  the 
climax  by  any  exaggerative  touches  which  really  tend 
to  bring  it  out.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  the  telling 
of  the  anecdote  has  become,  like  the  telling  of  the 
fairy-tale,  almost  a  distinct  artistic  creation ;  to  offer 
to  tell  a  story  is  in  ordinary  society  like  offering  to 
recite  or  play  the  violin.  No  one  denies  that  a  fixed 
and  genuine  moral  rule  could  be  drawn  up  for  these 
cases,  but  no  one  surely  need  be  ashamed  to  admit 
that  such  a  rule  is  not  entirely  easy  to  draw  up.  And 
when  a  man  like  Sludge  traces  much  of  his  moral 
downfall  to  the  indistinctness  of  the  boundary  and  the 
possibility  of  beginning  with  a  natural  extravagance 
and  ending  with  a  gross  abuse,  it  certainly  is  not 
possible  to  deny  his  right  to  be  heard. 

We  must  recur,  however,  to  the  question  of  the  main 
development  of  the  Sludge  self-analysis.  He  begins, 
as  we  have  said,  by  urging  a  general  excuse  by  the 


Tin.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  195 

fact  that  in  the  heat  of  social  life,  in  the  course  of 
telling  tales  in  the  intoxicating  presence  of  sympa- 
thisers and  believers,  he  has  slid  into  falsehood 
almost  before  he  is  aware  of  it.  So  far  as  this  goes, 
there  is  truth  in  his  plea.  Sludge  might  indeed  find 
himself  unexpectedly  justified  if  we  had  only  an  exact 
record  of  how  true  were  the  tales  told  about  Con- 
servatives in  an  exclusive  circle  of  Radicals,  or  the 
stories  told  about  Radicals  in  a  circle  of  indignant 
Conservatives.  But  after  this  general  excuse,  Sludge 
goes  on  to  a  perfectly  cheerful  and  unfeeling  admission 
of  fraud :  this  principal  feeling  towards  his  victims  is 
by  his  own  confession  a  certain  unfathomable  contempt 
for  people  who  are  so  easily  taken  in.  He  professes 
to  know  how  to  lay  the  foundations  for  every  species 
of  personal  acquaintanceship,  and  how  to  remedy  the 
slight  and  trivial  slips  of  making  Plato  write  Greek 
in  naughts  and  crosses, 

"  As  I  fear,  sir,  he  sometimes  used  to  do 
Before  I  found  the  useful  book  that  knows." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  any  figure  more 
indecently  confessional,  more  entirely  devoid  of  not 
only  any  of  the  restraints  of  conscience,  but  of  any 
of  the  restraints  even  of  a  wholesome  personal  con- 
ceit, than  Sludge  the  Medium.  He  confesses  not  only 
fraud,  but  things  which  are  to  the  natural  man  more 
difficult  to  confess  even  than  fraud  —  effeminacy, 
futility,  physical  cowardice.  And  then,  when  the  last 
of  his  loathsome  secrets  has  been  told,  when  he  has 
nothing  left  either  to  gain  or  to  conceal,  then  he  rises 
up  into  a  perfect  bankrupt  sublimity  and  makes  the 
great  avowal  which  is  the  whole  pivot  and  meaning  of 


196  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP. 

the  poem.  He  says  in  effect:  "  Now  that  rny  interest 
in  deceit  is  utterly  gone,  now  that  I  have  admitted,  to 
my  own  final  infamy,  the  frauds  that  I  have  practised, 
now  that  I  stand  before  you  in  a  patent  and  open  vil- 
lainy which  has  something  of  the  disinterestedness  and 
independence  of  the  innocent,  now  I  tell  you  with  the 
full  and  impartial  authority  of  a  lost  soul  that  I  believe 
that  there  is  something  in  spiritualism.  In  the  course 
of  a  thousand  conspiracies,  by  the  labour  of  a  thousand 
lies,  I  have  discovered  that  there  is  really  something 
in  this  matter  that  neither  I  nor  any  other  man  under- 
stands. I  am  a  thief,  an  adventurer,  a  deceiver  of 
mankind,  but  I  am  not  a  disbeliever  in  spiritualism. 
I  have  seen  too  much  for  that."  This  is  the  confession 
of  faith  of  ]\Ir.  Sludge  the  Medium.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine  a  confession  of  faith  framed  and 
presented  in  a  more  impressive  manner.  Sludge  is  a 
witness  to  his  faith  as  the  old  martyrs  were  witnesses 
to  their  faith,  but  even  more  impressively.  They 
testified  to  their  religion  even  after  they  had  lost  their 
liberty,  and  their  eyesight,  and  their  right  hands. 
Sludge  testifies  to  his  religion  even  after  he  has  lost 
his  dignity  and  his  honour. 

It  may  be  repeated  that  it  is  truly  extraordinary 
that  any  one  should  have  failed  to  notice  that  this 
avowal  on  behalf  of  spiritualism  is  the  pivot  of  the 
poem.  The  avowal  itself  is  not  only  expressed  clearly, 
but  prepared  and  delivered  with  admirable  rhetorical 
force :  — 

"Now  for  it.  then  !     Will  you  believe  me,  though  ? 
You've  heard  what  I  confess  :  I  don't  unsay 
A  single  word  :  I  cheated  when  I  could, 
Rapped  with  my  toe-joints,  set  sham  hands  to  work. 


vin.]  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  BROWNING  197 

Wrote  down  names  weak  in  sympathetic  ink, 

Rubbed  odic  lights  with  ends  of  phosper-match, 

And  all  the  rest ;  believe  that :  believe  this, 

By  the  same  token,  though  it  seem  to  set 

The  crooked  straight  again,  unsay  the  said, 

Stick  up  what  I've  knocked  down  ;  I  can't  help  that, 

It's  truth  !     I  somehow  vomit  truth  to-day. 

This  trade  of  mine  —  I  don't  know,  can't  be  sure 

But  there  was  something  in  it,  tricks  and  all ! " 

It  is  strange  to  call  a  poem  with  so  clear  and  fine 
a  climax  an  attack  on  spiritualism.  To  miss  that 
climax  is  like  missing  the  last  sentence  in  a  good 
anecdote,  or  putting  the  last  act  of  Othello  into  the 
middle  of  the  play.  Either  the  whole  poem  of 
"  Sludge  the  Medium "  means  nothing  at  all,  and  is 
only  a  lampoon  upon  a  cad,  of  which  the  matter  is 
almost  as  contemptible  as  the  subject,  or  it  means 
this — that  some  real  experiences  of  the  unseen  lie 
even  at  the  heart  of  hypocrisy,  and  that  even  the 
spiritualist  is  at  root  spiritual. 

One  curious  theory  which  is  common  to  most 
Browning  critics  is  that  Sludge  must  be  intended 
for  a  pure  and  conscious  impostor,  because  after  his 
confession,  and  on  the  personal  withdrawal  of  Mr. 
Horsfall,  he  bursts  out  into  horrible  curses  against 
that  gentleman  and  cynical  boasts  of  his  future 
triumphs  in  a  similar  line  of  business.  Surely  this 
is  to  have  a  very  feeble  notion  either  of  nature  or  art. 
A  man  driven  absolutely  into  a  corner  might  humiliate 
himself,  and  gain  a  certain  sensation  almost  of  lux- 
ury in  that  humiliation,  in  pouring  out  all  his  im- 
prisoned thoughts  and  obscure  victories.  For  let  it 
never  be  forgotten  that  a  hypocrite  is  a  very  unhappy 
man ;  he  is  a  man  who  has  devoted  himself  to  a  most 


198  ROBERT  BROWNING  J.CHAP. 

delicate  and  arduous  intellectual  art  in  which  he  may 
achieve  masterpieces  which  he  must  keep  secret,  fight 
thrilling  battles,  and  win  hair's-breadth  victories  for 
which  he  cannot  have  a  whisper  of  praise.  A  really 
accomplished  impostor  is  the  most  wretched  of  gen- 
iuses ;  he  is  a  Napoleon  on  a  desert  island.  A  man 
might  surely,  therefore,  when  he  was  certain  that  his 
credit  was  gone,  take  a  certain  pleasure  in  revealing  the 
tricks  of  his  unique  trade,  and  gaining  not  indeed  credit, 
but  at  least  a  kind  of  glory.  And  in  the  course  of  this 
self-revelation  he  would  come  at  last  upon  that  part 
of  himself  which  exists  in  every  man — that  part  which 
does  believe  in,  and  value,  and  worship  something. 
This  he  would  fling  in  his  hearer's  face  with  even 
greater  pride,  and  take  a  delight  in  giving  a  kind  of 
testimony  to  his  religion  which  no  man  had  ever  given 
before — the  testimony  of  a  martyr  who  could  not  hope 
to  be  a  saint.  But  surely  all  this  sudden  tempest  of 
candour  in  the  man  would  not  mean  that  he  would 
burst  into  tears  and  become  an  exemplary  ratepayer, 
like  a  villain  in  the  worst  parts  of  Dickens.  The 
moment  the  danger  was  withdrawn,  the  sense  of 
Laving  given  himself  away,  of  having  betrayed  the 
secret  of  his  infamous  freemasonry,  would  add  an 
indescribable  violence  and  foulness  to  his  reaction  of 
rage.  A  man  in  such  a  case  would  do  exactly  as 
Sludge  does.  He  would  declare  his  own  shame,  de- 
clare the  truth  of  his  creed,  and  then,  when  he  realised 
what  he  had  done,  say  something  like  this:  — 

"  R-r-r,  you  brute-beast  and  blackguard  !     Cowardly  scainp  ! 
I  only  wish  I  dared  burn  down  the  house 
And  spoil  your  sniggering  !  " 

and  so  on,  and  so  on. 


vin.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  BROWNING  199 

He  would  react  like  this ;  it  is  one  of  the  most 
artistic  strokes  in  Browning.  But  it  does  not  prove 
that  he  was  a  hypocrite  about  spiritualism,  or  that  he 
was  speaking  more  truthfully  in  the  second  outburst 
than  in  the  first.  Whence  came  this  extraordinary 
theory  that  a  man  is  always  speaking  most  truly  when 
he  is  speaking  most  coarsely  ?  The  truth  about  one- 
self is  a  very  difficult  thing  to  express,  and  coarse 
speaking  will  seldom  do  it. 

When  we  have  grasped  this  point  about  "Sludge 
the  Medium,"  we  have  grasped  the  key  to  the  whole 
series  of  Browning's  casuistical  monologues — Bishop 
Blougram's  Apology,  Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau,  Fra 
Lippo  Lippi,  Fifine  at  the  Fair,  Aristophanes'  Apology, 
and  several  of  the  monologues  in  TJie  Ring  and  the 
Book.  They  are  all,  without  exception,  dominated  by 
this  one  conception  of  a  certain  reality  tangled  almost 
inextricably  with  unrealities  in  a  man's  mind.  And 
the  peculiar  fascination  which  resides  in  the  thought 
that  the  greatest  lies  about  a  man,  and  the  greatest 
truths  about  him,  may  be  found  side  by  side  in  the 
same  eloquent  and  sustained  utterance. 

"  For  Blougram,  he  believed,  say,  half  he  spoke." 

Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  another  way,  the  general  idea 
of  these  poems  is,  that  a  man  cannot  help  telling  some 
truth  even  when  he  sets  out  to  tell  lies.  If  a  man 
comes  to  tell  us  that  he  has  discovered  perpetual 
motion,  or  been  swallowed  by  the  sea-serpent,  there 
will  yet  be  some  point  in  the  story  where  he  will  tell 
us  about  himself  almost  all  that  we  require  to  know. 
If  any  one  wishes  to  test  the  truth,  or  to  see  the 
best  examples  of  this  general  idea  in  Browning's 


200  ROBERT  BROWNING  [CHAP. 

monologues,  he  may  be  recommended  to  notice  one 
peculiarity  of  these  poems  which  is  rather  striking. 
As  a  whole,  these  apologies  are  written  in  a  particu- 
larly burly  and  even  brutal  English.  Browning's, 
love  of  what  is  called  the  ugly  is  nowhere  else  so 
fully  and  extravagantly  indulged.  This,  like  a  great 
many  other  things  for  which  Browning  as  an  artist  is 
blamed,  is  perfectly  appropriate  to  the  theme.  A  vain, 
ill-mannered,  and  untrustworthy  egotist,  defending 
his  own  sordid  doings  with  his  own  cheap  and  weather- 
beaten  philosophy,  is  very  likely  to  express  himself 
best  in  a  language  flexible  and  pungent,  but  indelicate 
and  without  dignity.  'But  the  peculiarity  of  these 
loose  and  almost  slangy  soliloquies  is  that  every  now 
and  then  in  them  there  occur  bursts  of  pure  poetry 
which  are  like  a  burst  of  birds  singing.  Browning  does 
not  hesitate  to  put  some  of  the  most  perfect  lines  that 
he  or  any  one  else  have  ever  written  in  the  English 
language  into  the  mouths  of  such  slaves  as  Sludge  and 
Guido  Eranceschini.  Take,  for  the  sake  of  example, 
"Bishop  Blougram's  Apology."  The  poem  is  one  of  the 
most  grotesque  in  the  poet's  works.  It  is  intention- 
ally redolent  of  the  solemn  materialism  and  patrician 
grossness  of  a  grand  dinner-party  (I  deux.  ,  It  has 
many  touches  of  an  almost  wild  bathos,  such  as  the 
young  man  who  bears  the  impossible  name  of  Gigadibs. 
The  Bishop,  in  pursuing  his  worldly  argument  for 
conformity,  points  out  with  truth  that  a  condition 
of  doubt  is  a  condition  that  cuts  both  ways,  and  that 
if  we  cannot  be  sure  of  the  religious  theory  of  life, 
neither  can  we  be  sure  of  the  material  theory  of  life, 
and  that  in  turn  is  capable  of  becoming  an  uncer- 
tainty continually  shaken  by  a  tormenting  sugges- 


vin.]  THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   BROWNING  201 

tion.  We  cannot  establish  ourselves  on  rationalism, 
and  make  it  bear  fruit  to  us.  Faith  itself  is  capable 
of  becoming  the  darkest  and  most  revolutionary  of 
doubts.  Then  comes  the  passage :  — 

"Just  when  we  are  safest,  there's  a  sunset-touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus  ending  from  Euripides,  — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  Nature's  self, 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul, 
Take  hands  and  dance  there,  a  fantastic  ring, 
Round  the  ancient  idol,  on  his  base  again, — 
The  grand  Perhaps  !  " 

Nobler  diction  and  a  nobler  meaning  could  not  have 
been  put  into  the  mouth  of  Pompilia,  or  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra.  It  is  in  reality  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  vulgar, 
fashionable  priest,  justifying  his  own  cowardice  over 
the  comfortable  wine  and  the  cigars. 

Along  with  this  tendency  to  poetry  among  Browning's 
knaves,  must  be  reckoned  another  characteristic,  their 
uniform  tendency  to  theism.  These  loose  and  mean 
characters  speak  of  many  things  feverishly  and 
vaguely;  of  one  thing  they  always  speak  with  confi- 
dence and  composure,  their  relation  to  God.  It  may 
seem  strange  at  first  sight  that  those  who  have  out- 
lived the  indulgence,  not  only  of  every  law,  but 
of  every  reasonable  anarchy,  should  still  rely  so 
simply  upon  the  indulgence  of  divine  perfection. 
Thus  Sludge  is  certain  that  his  life  of  lies  and  con- 
juring tricks  has  been  conducted  in  a  deep  and  subtle 
obedience  to  the  message  really  conveyed  by  the  con- 
ditions created  by  God.  Thus  Bishop  Blougram  is 
certain  that  his  life  of  panic-stricken  and  tottering 
compromise  has  been  really  justified  as  the  only 


202  ROBERT   BROWNING  [CHAP.  vin. 

method  that  could  unite  him  with  God.  Thus  Prince 
Hohenstiel-Schwangau  is  certain  that  every  dodge  in 
his  thin  string  of  political  dodges  has  been  the  true 
means  of  realising  what  he  believes  to  be  the  will  of 
God.  Every  one  of  these  meagre  swindlers,  while 
admitting  a  failure  in  all  things  relative,  claims  an 
awful  alliance  with  the  Absolute.  To  many  it  will  at 
first  sight  appear  a  dangerous  doctrine  indeed.  But, 
in  truth,  it  is  a  most  solid  and  noble  and  salutary 
doctrine,  far  less  dangerous  than  its  opposite.  Every 
one  on  this  earth  should  believe,  amid  whatever  mad- 
ness or  moral  failure,  that  his  life  and  temperament 
have  some  object  on  the  earth.  Every  one  on  the 
earth  should  believe  that  he  has  something  to  give  to 
the  world  which  cannot  otherwise  be  given.  Every 
one  should,  for  the  good  of  men  and  the  saving  of 
his  own  soul,  believe  that  it  is  possible,  even  if  we 
are  the  enemies  of  the  human  race,  to  be  the  friends 
of  God.  The  evil  wrought  by  this  mystical  pride, 
great  as  it  often  is,  is  like  a  straw  to  the  evil  wrought 
by  a  materialistic  self-abandonment.  The  crimes  of 
the  devil  who  thinks  himself  of  immeasurable  value 
are  as  nothing  to  the  crimes  of  the  devil  who  thinks 
himself  of  no  value.  With  Browning's  knaves  we 
have  always  this  eternal  interest,  that  they  are  real 
somewhere,  and  may  at  any  moment  begin  to  speak 
poetry.  We  are  talking  to  a  peevish  and  garrulous 
sneak  ;  we  are  watching  the  play  of  his  paltry  features, 
his  evasive  eyes,  and  babbling  lips.  And  suddenly  the 
face  begins  to  change  and  harden,  the  eyes  glare  like 
the  eyes  of  a  mask,  the  whole  face  of  clay  becomes  a 
common  mouthpiece,  and  the  voice  that  comes  forth  is 
the  voice  of  God,  uttering  His  everlasting  soliloquy. 


INDEX 


Agamemnon   of  ^Eschylus,    The, 

120. 

Alliance,  The  Holy,  89. 
"  Andrea  del  Sarto,"  83. 
Aristophanes'  Apology,  120, 199. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  41,  55,  56. 
Asolando,  132. 
Asolo  (Italy),  42,  131. 
"  At  the  Mermaid,"  117. 
Austria,  88,  89. 

B 

"  Bad  Dreams,"  138. 

Balaustion's  Adventure,  119-120. 

Barrett,  Arabella,  74,  119. 

Barrett,  Edward  Moulton,  58  seq., 
70,  73,  74,  76,  79. 

Beardsley,  Mr.  Aubrey,  149. 

Sells  and  Pomegranates,  105. 

"Ben  Ezra,"  23,201. 

Birrell,  Mr.  Augustine,  160. 

"  Bishop  Blougram,"  51,  189. 

Bishop  Blougram's  Apology,  188, 
189,  199,  200. 

Blot  on  the  'Scutcheon,  A,  53. 

Boyd,  Mr.,  62. 

Browning,  Robert :  birth  and  fam- 
ily history,  3;  theories  as  to  his 
descent,  4-8 ;  a  typical  English- 
man of  the  middle  class,  9;  his 
immediate  ancestors,  10  seq. ; 
education,  12;  boyhood  and 
youth,  17 ;  first  poems,  Incon- 
dita,  17;  romantic  spirit,  18; 

203 


publication  of  Pauline,  20; 
friendship  with  literary  men,  21 ; 
Paracelsus,  22;  introduction  to 
literary  world,  25 ;  his  earliest 
admirers,  26;  friendship  with 
Carlyle,  26;  Strafford,  27;  Sor- 
dello,  34;  Pippa  Passes,  43; 
Dramatic  Lyrics,  45 ;  The  Re- 
turn of  the  Druses,  51 ;  A  Blot 
on  the  'Scutcheon,  53;  corre- 
spondence with  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett, 62  seq. ;  their  first  meeting, 
70 ;  marriage  and  elopement,  78, 
79;  life  in  Italy,  81  seq. ;  love  of 
Italy,  82,  85  seq. ;  sympathy  with 
Italian  Revolution,  90;  attitude 
towards  spiritualism,  91  seq., 
113,  190-199;  death  of  his  wife, 
103;  returns  to  England,  105; 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  110; 
culmination  of  his  literary  fame, 
110,  117;  life  in  society,  110; 
elected  Fellow  of  Balliol,  117; 
honoured  by  the  great  Univer- 
sities, 118 ;  Balaustion's  Adven- 
ture, 119-120 ;  Aristophanes' 
Apology,  120;  The  Agamemnon 
ofdZschylus,  120 ;  Prince  Hohen- 
stiel-Schwangau,  121;  Red-Cot- 
ton Night-Cap  Country,  122; 
Fifine  at  the  Fair,  124 ;  The  Inn 
Album,  125;  Pacchiarotto,  and 
How  He  Worked  in  Distemper, 
125 ;  La  Saisiaz,  127 ;  The  Two 
Poets  of  Croisic,  127 ;  Dramatic 


204 


ROBERT  BROWNING 


Idylls,  127;  Jocoseria,  127;  Fe- 
rishtah's  Fancies,  127;  Parley- 
ings  with  Certain  People  of 
Importance  in  their  Day,  128; 
accepts  post  of  Foreign  Corre- 
spondent to  the  Royal  Academy, 
129;  goes  to  Llangolleii  with  his 
sister,  130;  last  journey  to  Italy, 
130;  death  at  Venice,  132 ;  pub- 
lication of  Asolando,  132;  his 
conversation,  36;  vanity,  33,  36; 
faults  and  virtues,  40,  55  ;  his  in- 
terest in  Art,  82  seq. ;  his  varied 
accomplishments,  84-85;  person- 
ality and  presence,  18,  33,  112 
seq.;  his  prejudices,  113-116;  his 
occasional  coarseness,  116;  poli- 
tics, 80  seq.;  Browning  as  a 
father,  105 ;  as  dramatist,  52 ;  as 
a  literary  artist,  133  seq. ;  his 
use  of  the  grotesque,  48,  140, 143, 
148  seq. ;  his  failures,  141 ;  ar- 
tistic originality,  136,  143,  158; 
keen  sense  of  melody  and 
rhythm,  145  seq. ;  ingenuity  in 
rhyming,  152;  his  buffoonery, 
154;  obscurity,  154  seq. ;  his 
conception  of  the  Universe,  175; 
philosophy,  177  seq.;  optimism, 
179  seq. ;  his  love  poetry,  49;  his 
knaves,  51,  201-202;  the  key  to 
his  casuistical  monologues,  19ft. 

Browning,  Life  of  (Mrs.  Orr),  92. 

Browning,  Robert  (father  of  the 
poet) ,  10,  119. 

Browning,  Mrs.,  nee,  Wiedermann 
(mother),  11,  82. 

Browning,  Anna  (sister),  14,  105. 

Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett 
(wife),  57  seq.,  91-99,  101,  103, 
116,  119,  129,  131. 

Browning  Society,  129. 

Burns.  Robert,  169-170. 

Byron.  11,  38,  141,  143. 

Byrouism,  19,  117. 


C 

"Caliban, "9,  120. 

"Caliban  upon  Setebos,"  93,  135, 

138. 

Cainberwell,  3,  8,  19. 
"  Caponsacchi,"  108. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  12, 16, 17,  26,  55, 

56,  87,  115. 
Carlyle,  Mrs.,  26. 
"  Cavalier  Tunes,"  46. 
Cavour,  86,  90,  103. 
Charles  I.,  28,  29. 
Chaucer,  117. 
"  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower 

came,"  159. 
Christmas  Eve,  105. 
Church  in  Italy,  The,  88. 
"Clive,"  127. 
Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  56. 
Colombe's  Birthday,  32. 
Corelli,  Miss  Marie,  38. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  73. 

D 

Darwin,  23,  39. 

Dickens,  16. 

"Djabal,"  51,  52. 

Domett,  Alfred,  21. 

"Dominus  Hyacinthus  de  Archan- 

gelis,"  161. 
Dramatic  Idylls,  127. 
Dramatic  Lyrics,  45-50. 
Dramatis  Personss,  105. 
Duffy,  Sir  Charles  Gavan,  187, 188- 

E 

Edinburgh  Review,  122. 

"  Englishman  in  Italy,  The,"  150. 


"Fears  and  Scruples,"  126,  138. 
"Ferishtah's  Fancies,"  138. 
Fifine  at  the  Fair,  9,  13,  51,  124, 

199. 
Fitzgerald,  Edward,  116,  131. 


INDEX 


206 


Flight  of  the  Duchess,  The,  18. 

Florence,  81,  94. 

Forster,  John,  26,  187,  188. 

Fox,  Mr.  Johnson,  20. 

Fox,  Mrs.  Bridell,  33. 

"  Fra  Lippo,"  51. 

Fra  Lippo  Lippi,  83,  199. 

French  Revolution,  87. 

Fumivall,  Dr.,  7,  129. 

G 

"  Garden  Fancies,"  46. 
Garibaldi,  86,  89. 
Gilbert,  W.  S.,  144. 
Gissiug,  Mr.  George,  165. 
Gladstone,  117. 

Golden  Treasury  (Palgrave),  168. 
Goldsmith,  169,  170. 
Gordon,  General,  90. 
"Guido  Franceschini, "   106,  120, 
200. 

H 

Henley,  Mr.,  148. 

"Heretic's  Tragedy,  The,"  137. 

Hickey,  Miss  E.  H.,  129. 

"Holy  Cross  Day,"  153. 

Home,  David  (spiritualist),  93-97, 

113,  190,  191. 
Home,    David,    Memoirs    of,    93 

seq. 

Home,  26. 

Houghton,  Lord,  129. 
"House,"  138. 
"Householder,  The,"  138. 
"  How  they  brought  the  good  News 

from  Ghent  to  Aix,"  46. 
Hudibras  (Butler),  57. 
Hugo,  Victor,  17. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  26. 


Incondita,  17. 

Inn  Alburn,  The,  125. 

Instant  Tyrannus,  9. 


Italy,  85  seq. 

Italian  Revolution,  88  seq. 

"  Ivan  Ivanovitch,"  127. 


Jameson,  Mrs.,  75. 

Jerrold,  Douglas,  34. 

Jocoseria,  127. 

Jowett,  Dr.,  118. 

Julius  Cxsar  (Shakespeare),  28. 

"Juris  Doctor  Bottinius,"  161. 

K 

Keats,  15,  16,  19,  137,  142. 
Kenyon,  Mr.,  22,  58,  69-70,  74,  76. 
King  Victor  and  King  Charles,  32. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  142. 
Kirkup,  Seymour,  103. 


L'Aiglon,  28. 

"Laboratory,  The,"  47,  143. 

Landor,  26,  56,  93, 101-103. 

La  Saisiaz,  127. 

Letters,  The  Browning,  63. 

Liberalism,  86. 

"Lines  to  Ed  ward  Fitzgerald,"  131. 

Llangollen,  130. 

Lockhart,  112. 

"Lost  Leader,  The,"  46. 

"Lover's  Quarrel,  A,"  50. 

"  Luigi,"  45. 

Lytton,  Lord  (novelist),  91. 

M 

Macready,  17,  27,  53. 
Maeterlinck,  164,  184. 
Manning,  Cardinal,  91. 
Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  29. 
"Master  Hugues  of  Saxe-Gotha," 

147. 

"  May  and  Death,"  21. 
Mazzini,  89. 
Men  and  Women,  105. 
Meredith,  George,  156,  165. 


206 


Mill,  John  Stuart,  26,  66. 

Milsand,  119. 

Milton,  137. 

Monckton  Milnes,  26,  100. 

Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium,  82,  96, 

120,  190-199. 
"  Mule'ykeh,"  127. 
"  My  Star,"  138. 

N 

Napoleon,  42,  89. 
Napoleon  III,  56,  92, 121. 
"Nationality  in  Driuks,"  46,  138. 
"  Never  the  Time  and  the  Place," 

127. 

Newman,  Cardinal,  193. 
Norwood,  18. 

O 

"  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality "  (Wordsworth),  136. 

"  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  "  (Keats), 
137. 

"  Old  Masters  in  Florence,"  177. 

"  One  Word  More,"  65. 

Orr,  Mrs.,  72. 


Pacchiarotto,  and  How  He  Worked 
in  Distemper,  125,  126,  152. 

Paracelsus,  22,  25,  26,  41,  47,  158. 

"Paracelsus,"  24,  25. 

Painting,  Poems  on,  83. 

Palgrave,  Francis,  117. 

Paris,  94. 

Parleyings  with  Certain  Persons 
of  Importance  in  their  Day,  22, 
128,  158. 

Pauline,  20,  21,  37,  41,  51. 

"  Pheidippides,"  127. 

Phelps  (actor),  53. 

"  Pictor  Ignotus,"  83. 

"  Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin,  The,"  153. 

"Pippa,"  45,  120. 

Pippa  Passes,  18,  45,  47,  51, 137. 


Pisa,  81. 

Pius  IX,  Church  under,  88. 

Plato,  21,  23. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  144. 

Poetry,  Pessimistic  school  of,  130. 

"  Pompilia,"  201. 

Pope,  11,  20,  57. 

"  Portrait,  A,"  138. 

Prince      Hohenstiel  -  Schwangau, 

121-122. 

Princess,  The  (Tennyson),  148. 
"  Prometheus  Unbound  "  (Shelley), 

137. 

Prussia,  88,  89. 
Puritans,  30. 
Pym,  28,  30. 

R 

"  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  201. 
Red-Cotton    Night-Cap    Country, 

122-124. 

Return  of  the  Druses,  The,  51-53. 
Revolution,  The  French,  15 ;  Italian 

90. 
Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  85,  106, 

109,  123,  137,  160-176. 
Ripert-Monclar,  Comte  de,  22,  93. 
Roman  Church,  114,  187,  188. 
Rossetti,  163. 
Royalists,  30. 
Ruskin,  16,  55,  56,  91,  115. 
Russia,  88. 

S 

Sand,  George,  9,  94. 

Santay ana's,  Mr.,  Interpretations 

of  Poetry  and  Religion,  183-186. 
"  Sebald,"  45. 
Shakespeare,  17,  57. 
Shakespeare  Society,  129. 
Sharp,  Mr.  William,  133. 
Shaw,  Mr.  Bernard,  165. 
Shelley,  15,  16,  17,  19,  56,  136,  141, 

143. 
"Shop,"  138. 


INDEX 


207 


"  Sibrandus      Schafnaburgensis," 

138. 
Silverthorne  (Browning's  cousin), 

21. 

"  Sludge,"  51,  52,  150,  189,  200. 
Smith,  Elder  (publishers),  110. 
"  Soliloquy  of  the  Spanish  Cloister, 

The,"  47. 
"Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese," 

65. 

Sordello,  23,  34,  42. 
Speech,  Free,  173. 
Spenser,  142. 

Spiritualism,  9,  91,  113,  190. 
"  Statue    and    the    Bust,    The," 

109. 

Sterne,  117. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  60, 114. 
Strafford,  27  seq.,  37. 
Swinburne,  56,  116,  142,  143. 


Tait's  Magazine,  20. 
Talfourd,  Sergeant,  26. 
Tennyson,  27,  34,  55,  117,  141,  142, 

143,  148. 

Thackeray,  Miss,  123. 
"  Through  the  Metidja  to  Abd-el- 

Kadr,"  46. 

Time's  Revenges,  9,  93. 
Tolstoi,  115. 


Tristram  Shandy  (Sterne),  163. 
Two  Poets  of  Croisic,  The,  127. 

U 

University  College,  14. 
"  Up     jumped     Tokay "     (poem 
quoted),  140. 


Venice,  131. 

Victor  of  Sardinia,  King,  23. 

Vogler,  Abt,  23. 

W 

Water  Babies  (Kingsley),  8. 

Watts,  Mr.  G.  F.,  112. 

Whitman,   Walt,  21,   43,   49,  114, 

165,  184. 
"Why  I  am  a  Liberal"  (sonnet), 

86. 

Wiedermann,  William,  12. 
Wiseman,  Cardinal,  188. 
Wimbledon  Common,  18. 
Wordsworth,  69,  136,  141,  143. 
Wordsworth  Society,  129. 


"  Youth  and  Art,"  50,  109. 


Zola,  164. 


ENGLISH   MEN   OF   LETTERS 


TENNYSON 


BY 
SIR    ALFRED     LYALL,    K.C.B. 


NEW   YORK 
GROSSET    &    DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,  1902, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1902. 
Reprinted  May,  1906. 


Nornjootr 

J.  8.  Gushing:  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TENNYSON 

CHAPTER  I 

BOYHOOD   AT   CAMBRIDGE 

THAT  the  imaginative  literature  of  a  period  preserves 
and  represents  the  ideas,  feelings,  and  manners  of  the 
generation  to  which  it  belongs,  is  sufficiently  manifest. 
And  Taine,  in  his  exposition  of  the  theory  upon  which 
he  wrote  his  History  of  ^English  Literature,  affirms  that 
any  considerable  literary  work  will  exhibit,  under  care- 
ful analysis,  not  only  the  writer's  state  of  mind,  his 
experiences  and  way  of  life,  but  also  the  long-descended 
influences  of  race  and  tradition,  the  temper  of  his  time, 
and  the  general  intellectual  condition  of  his  nation. 
The  choice  of  words  (he  says),  the  style,  the  metaphors 
used,  the  accent  and  rhythm  of  verses,  the  logical 
order  of  his  reasoning,  are  all  outward  forms  and  signs 
of  these  complex  impressions,  and  so  of  the  environ- 
ment that  has  moulded  them.  Literature,  in  short, 
may  be  employed  by  the  critic  and  the  historian  as 
a  delicate  instrument  for  analysis,  for  investigating 
the  psychology  of  the  man  and  of  his  period,  for  laying 
bare  the  springs  of  thought  and  action  which  underlie 
and  explain  history.  And  poetry  is  the  most  intense 
expression  of  the  dominant  emotions  and  the  higher 
ideals  of  the  age.. 

Whether  Taine  did   not   press   his   theory  too   far 

B  1 


2  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

is  a  question  that  has  been  often  debated ;  and  at  any 
rate  the  proper  use  of  it  demands  a  master-hand. 
Certain  it  is  that  each  age  has  its  peculiar  spirit,  its 
own  outlook  on  the  world ;  and  that  a  great  poet,  or 
group  of  poets,  absorb  the  new  ideas  growing  up 
around  them,  and  have  the  gift  of  inventing  their 
appropriate  fashion  or  setting.  They  are  usually  fol- 
lowed by  a  host  of  imitators ;  but  when  the  work  has 
been  once  well  done,  the  highest  imitative  skill  will 
not  make  it  really  worth  doing  again  in  the  same 
manner ;  we  must  wait  until  the  changing  world  closes 
one  period  and  opens  a  fresh  one.  This  point  of  view 
may  perhaps  be  accepted  in  studying  the  life  and  works 
of  one  who  has  been  the  chief  poet  of  our  own  time. 
It  is  true  that  the  increasing  variety  and  diffusion 
of  literature  during  the  nineteenth  century  interfere 
with  the  method  of  taking  one  writer,  however 
eminent,  as  the  intellectual  representative  of  his 
society,  and  also  that  we  do  not  yet  stand  at  a  suf- 
ficient distance  from  a  contemporary  poet  to  be  able 
to  measure  accurately  his  position.  Nevertheless, 
Tennyson's  popularity  grew  so  steadily  and  spread  so 
widely  for  nearly  sixty  years,  and  his  influence  over 
his  generation  has  been  so  remarkable,  that  his  finest 
poetry  may  undoubtedly  be  treated  as  an  illustrative 
record  of  the  prevailing  spirit,  of  the  temperament,  and 
to  some  degree  of  the  national  character  of  his  period. 
It  is  in  Tennyson's  poetry,  moreover,  that  we  must 
look  for  the  chronicle  of  his  life.  That  no  biographer 
could  so  truly  give  him  as  he  gives  himself  in  his  own 
works,  are  almost  the  first  words  of  the  preface  to  the 
admirable  Memoir  written  of  his  father  by  the  pres- 
ent Lord  Tennyson.  So  thoroughly,  indeed,  and  so 


i.]  BOYHOOD   AT   CAMBRIDGE  3 

recently,  has  this  biography  been  written,  with  such 
complete  and  exclusive  command  of  all  available 
materials,  that  in  regard  to  the  course  and  incidents 
of  the  poet's  life  it  leaves  almost  nothing  to  be 
discovered  or  added;  and  every  subsequent  narrative 
must  draw  upon  this  source  of  information.  Nearly 
all  the  private  or  personal  facts  and  incidents  connected 
with  Tennyson  or  with  his  family  have,  therefore,  been 
necessarily  taken  directly  from  the  Memoir? 

Alfred  Tennyson  descended  from  a  family  that  had 
been  settled  for  some  centuries  in  the  north-east  of 
England,  at  first  in  Holderness,  beyond  the  Humber, 
and  latterly  in  Lincolnshire.  His  father,  Dr.  George 
Clayton  Tennyson,  was  Kector  of  Somersby  near 
Horncastle,  and  of  other  small  parishes.  Mr.  Howitt, 
writing  in  1847,  says  of  the  Eector  that  he  was  a  man 
of  very  various  talents,  something  of  a  poet,  a  painter, 
an  architect,  and  a  musician.  The  poet's  mother  was 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  the  Keverend  Stephen  Fytche. 
At  Somersby  he  was  born  on  the  6th  August  1809 ; 
and  when  he  was  seven  years  old  he  was  sent  to  school 
at  the  neighbouring  town  of  Louth.  In  those  days, 
and  long  afterward,  boys  made  their  first,  often  their 
hardest,  experience  of  a  rough  world  at  a  very  tender 
age,  for  in  these  country  schools  the  discipline  was 
harsh  and  the  manners  rude;  so  that  a  child  lived 
between  fear  of  the  master's  rod  and  the  bullying  of 
his  big  schoolmates,  and  probably  learnt  little  more 
than  the  habit  of  endurance.  Professor  Hales  has 
left  a  record 2  of  his  experiences  at  this  school,  which 

1  The  writer  of  this  volume  has  made  some  occasional  use  of 
an  article  that  he  contributed  on  Tennyson  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review.  2  Appendix  to  vol.  i.  of  the  Memoir. 


4  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

shows  that  the  masters  had  a  way  of  hitting  the  boys 
wantonly,  an  unconscious  propensity  to  find  amuse- 
ment in  giving  pain  that  often  becomes  habitual.  But 
Tennyson's  school  experiences,  though  early,  were 
fortunately  short,  for  after  two  years  he  was  removed 
from  Louth,  and  it  appears  that  for  the  next  ten  years 
he  was  taught  at  home  by  his  father,  whose  scholarship 
was  considerable.  No  better  luck  can  befall  a  boy 
who  can  avail  himself  of  it  than  to  be  left  to  himself 
among  good  books  while  his  mind  is  quite  fresh ;  and 
Tennyson  made  full  use  of  the  Rector's  ample  library. 
His  earliest  verses,  at  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  of  age, 
show  uncommon  promise ;  and  in  1826,  when  he  was 
seventeen,  were  published  the  Poems  by  Two  Brothers 
(Alfred  and  Charles)  upon  a  variety  of  subjects,  grave 
and  gay,  evidently  drawn  from  wide  miscellaneous 
reading :  the  metrical  composition  is  promising,  while 
there  are  occasional  signs  of  that  descriptive  faculty 
which  matured  so  rapidly  in  Tennyson's  later  works. 
In  1828  he  went,  with  his  brother  Charles,  to  Cam- 
bridge, and  matriculated  at  Trinity  College,  where 
at  first  Alfred,  being  accustomed  to  home  life,  and  not 
having  passed  through  the  preparatory  ordeal  of  a 
public  school,  found  himself  solitary  and  ill  at  ease. 

"  I  know  not  how  it  is,  but  I  feel  isolated  here  in  the  midst 
of  society.  The  country  is  so  disgustingly  level,  the  revelry 
of  the  place  so  monotonous,  the  studies  of  the  University  so 
uninteresting,  so  much  matter  of  fact.  None  but  dry-headed, 
angular,  calculating  little  gentlemen  can  take  much  delight  in 
them."  l 

But  his  face  and  figure  were  both  very  remarkable, 
and  his  rare  intellectual  qualities  could  not  long  remain 

1  Memoir,  vol.  i.  p.  34. 


I.]  BOYHOOD   AT  CAMBRIDGE  5 

undiscovered.  The  list  given  in  the  Memoir  of  the 
friends  with  whom  he  consorted  shows  that  he  soon 
became  intimate  with  the  best  men  at  Cambridge, 
whose  admiration  and  attachment  he  rapidly  won. 
It  is  evident  that  he  had  already  a  notable  gift  of  terse 
and  forcible  expression,  and  the  turn  for  apt  meta- 
phors which  comes  from  a  lively  imagination.  He 
lived  among  men  who  made  the  right  use  of  a  Uni- 
versity, who  delighted  in  the  interchange  of  ideas  and 
opinions,  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  in  the  discus- 
sion of  politics,  in  literature,  speculation,  and  scientific 
discoveries ;  who  were  keenly  interested  in  the  world 
aroimd  them,  and  in  the  condition  of  their  own  country. 
In  short,  he  was  one  of  the  few  great  English  poets 
who  have  fallen  in  readily  with  the  ways  and  manners 
of  a  cultured  class  and  their  social  surroundings,  who 
did  not  in  their  youth  either  hold  themselves  apart 
from  the  ordinary  life  of  school  or  college,  or  live 
recklessly,  or  rebel  against  social  conventions. 

As  the  poets  of  the  foregoing  generation  had  been 
profoundly  stirred  in  their  first  manhood  by  the  revo- 
lutionary tumult  in  France,  so  Tennyson  felt  and 
sympathised,  though  more  moderately,  with  the  Eng- 
lish agitation  for  reform.  But  in  1830  the  period  of 
wild  enthusiasm  for  freedom,  for  the  rights  of  man 
and  for  abstract  political  theories,  had  passed  away ; 
the  vague  hatred  of  priests  and  despots  had  become 
toned  down  into  demands  for  reasonable  improvements 
of  Church  and  State.  It  was  an  age  of  practical  Lib- 
eralism, of  strong  intellectual  fermentation  stimulated 
by  the  growing  power  of  the  Press  ;  of  energetic  agi- 
tation for  political,  economical,  and  legislative  reforms 
on  one  side,  resisted  on  the  other  side  by  stubborn  de- 


6  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

fenders  of  antiquated  institutions  that  were  believed 
to  be  essential  safeguards  against  the  total  overthrow 
of  society.  In  those  days  the  ardent  young  Liberal 
had  a  definite  programme  and  a  clear  objective  for 
his  attack ;  though  his  impulse  might  be  restrained 
by  alarm,  at  the  violent  methods  and  sweeping  theo- 
ries that  were  in  vogue  with  extreme  and  resolute 
reformers.  Tennyson  was  never  of  a  sanguine  tem- 
perament; and  his  reflective  mind  was  always  liable 
to  be  darkened  by  the  apprehension  of  consequences. 
He  represented,  naturally,  the  temperate  opinions  on 
questions  of  Church  and  State  of  an  educated  Lib- 
eral, with  whom  rioting  and  violent  Radicalism 
strengthened  the  fellow-feeling  for  widespread  dis- 
tress, and  for  the  real  needs  and  grievances  of  the 
people.  The  notes  of  bitter  irony,  the  spirit  of  fierce 
revolt  that  run  through  the  poetry  of  Byron  and 
Shelley,  belong  to  another  time  and  temper.  In  Ten- 
nyson we  have  the  Englishman's  ingrained  abhorrence 
of  unruly  disorder,  the  tradition  of  a  State  well  bal- 
anced, of  liberty  fenced  in  by  laws,  of  veneration  for 
the  past;  we  have  the  hatred  of  fanaticism  in  any 
shape,  political  or  clerical,  the  distrust  of  popular 
impatience,  the  belief  in  the  gradual  betterment  of 
human  ills.  In  the  verses  to  Mary  Boyle,  written  long 
afterwards,  he  alludes  to  an  incident  that  cannot  but 
have  accentuated  his  innate  dread  of  mob-rule,  which 
comes  out  in  several  passages  of  his  later  poems  — 

"  In  rick-fire  days, 
When  Dives  loathed  the  times,  and  paced  his  land 

In  fear  of  worse, 
And  sanguine  Lazarus  felt  a  vacant  hand 

Fill  with  h  is  purse  ; 


i.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMB1UDGE  7 

For  lowly  minds  were  madden' d  to  the  height 

By  tonguester  tricks, 
And  once  —  I  well  remember  that  red  night 

When  thirty  ricks, 
All  naming,  made  an  English  homestead  Hell  — 

These  hands  of  mine 
Have  helpt  to  pass  a  bucket  from  the  well 

Along  the  line." 

"When  he  was  asked  what  politics  he  held,  he  answered 
characteristically,  "  I  am  of  the  same  politics  as  Shake- 
speare, Bacon,  and  every  sane  man  " ;  and  he  might  not 
have  objected  to  be  classed,  theologically,  among  those 
who  restrict  their  confession  of  faith  to  the  declaration 
that  they  hold  the  religion  of  all  sensible  men. 

That  Tennyson  was  numbered  among  the  Apostles 
at  Cambridge  may  be  reckoned  as  a  sign  of  his  early 
reputation ;  the  more  so  because  he  appears  to  have 
contributed  very  little,  either  by  speech  or  writing,  to 
the  free  discussions  on  things  temporal  and  spiritual 
of  that  notable  society.  He  is  depicted  as  smoking 
and  meditating,  sitting  in  front  of  the  fire,  summing 
up  argument  in  one  short  phrase ;  and  the  only  essay 
that  he  produced  he  was  too  modest  to  deliver.  Of 
the  Apostles  various  reminiscences  survive ;  the  sub- 
joined extract  may  be  quoted  to  explain  its  constitu- 
tion and  character  :  — 

"  The  very  existence  of  this  body  was  scarcely  known  to 
the  University  at  large,  and  its  members  held  reticence  to 
be  a  point  of  honour.  .  .  .  The  members  were  on  the  look- 
out for  any  indications  of  intellectual  originality,  academical 
or  otherwise,  and  specially  contemptuous  of  humbug,  cant, 
and  the  qualities  of  the  windbag  in  general.  To  be  elected, 
therefore,  was  virtually  to  receive  a  certificate  from  some  of 
your  cleverest  contemporaries  that  they  regarded  you  likely 


8  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  be  in  future  an  eminent  man.  The  judgment  so  passed 
was  perhaps  as  significant  as  that  implied  by  University 
honours,  and  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  Apostles  have 
justified  the  anticipation  of  their  fellows."  1 

In  Tennyson's  case  the  apostolic  prophecy  has  been 
undoubtedly  fulfilled ;  and  his  prize  poem  on  Timbuc- 
too,  written  in  his  twentieth  year,  soon  appeared  to 
confirm  among  his  friends  their  first  augury  of  his 
future  celebrity.  It  was  patched  up,  he  tells  us,  from 
an  old  poem  on  the  Battle  of  Armageddon,  a  curious 
adaptation  of  subjects  that  might  be  supposed  to  have 
nothing  in  common ;  except,  possibly,  such  hazy  dis- 
tances of  space  and  time  as  might  afford  wide  scope 
to  a  poet's  imagination. 

Academic  distinction  in  verse  may  have  often  sug- 
gested predictions  of  coming  fame,  yet  these  are  rarely 
fulfilled,  for  the  stars  of  poetical  genius  run  in  irregu- 
lar courses.  Tennyson's  poem  had  the  usual  qualities 
of  correct  taste  and  polished  diction,  but  it  also  showed 
much  originality  of  treatment  and  creative  fancy ;  for 
the  writer,  instead  of  attempting  the  unpromising  task 
of  describing  a  den  of  savages,  or  of  rendering  poeti- 
cally the  accounts  brought  home  by  travellers,  places 
himself  on  a  mountain  that  overlooks  the  great  ocean, 
muses  over  the  fabled  Atlantis,  dreams  of  Eldorado, 

and  asks  — 

"  Wide  Afric,  doth  thy  Sun 
Lighten,  thy  hills  unfold  a  city  as  fair 
As  those  which  starred  the  night  of  the  elder  world  ? 
Or  is  the  rumour  of  thy  Timbuctoo 
A  dream  as  frail  as  those  of  ancient  time  ?  " 

He  is  wondering  whether   the  reality  of  some   such 
1  Life  of  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  by  Leslie  Stephen. 


i.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  9 

glorious  vision  may  not  be  hidden  far  in  the  recesses 
of  the  dark  Continent.  To  him  appears  the  Spirit  of 
the  Ideal,  symbolising 

"  The  permeating  life  which  courses  through 
All  th'  intricate  and  labyrinthine  veins 
Of  the  great  mine  of  Fable," 

and  shows  him  a  river  winding  through 

"  The  argent  streets  of  the  city,  imaging 
The  soft  inversion  of  her  tremulous  dome*." 

But 

"  The  time  has  well  nigh  come 
When  I  must  render  up  this  glorious  home 
To  keen  Discovery," 

when  the  brilliant  towers  shall  shrink  and  shiver  into 

huts 

"  Black  specks  amid  a  waste  of  dreary  sand 
Low-built,  mud-walled,  barbarian  settlements. 
How  changed  from  this  fair  city  !  " 

This,  the  first  poem  of  Tennyson,  is  worth  notice 
because  it  contains  in  embryo  the  qualities  which 
emerge  in  his  later  verse,  his  delight  in  picturesque 
and  luxuriant  description,  his  meditative  power  of 
falling  into  moods  which  give  full  scope,  as  in  a  trance 
or  dream,  to  the  roving  imagination ;  his  manner  of 
presenting  ideas  symbolically.  Although  Charles 
Wordsworth  wrote  of  it  that  at  Oxford  the  poem 
might  have  qualified  its  author  for  a  lunatic  asylum, 
Arthur  Hallam,  who  was  beaten  in  the  competition, 
laid  stress,  in  a  letter  to  W.  E.  Gladstone,  on  its 
"splendid  imaginative  power,"  and  said  that  he  con- 
sidered Tennyson  as  "  promising  fair  to  be  the  greatest 
poet  of  our  generation  "  —  a  remarkably  far-seeing  pre- 


10  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

diction  to  have  been  built  on  so  slender  a  founda- 
tion. A  review  in  the  Athenaeum  (at  that  time  under 
the  joint-editorship  of  John  Sterling  and  Frederick 
Maurice)  declared  that  it  "indicated  really  first-rate 
poetical  genius,  which  would  have  done  honour  to 
any  man  that  ever  wrote."  The  poem,  in  blank 
verse,  was  recited  in  the  Senate  House  by  the  late 
Dean  Merivale,  since  the  ordeal  was  too  much  for 
Tennyson's  habitual  diffidence. 

The  Memoir  has  preserved  for  us  several  poems 
written  by  Tennyson  at  Cambridge  (1828-1831)  that 
were  never  published.  In  one  of  these,  "  Anacaona," 
which  was  suppressed  (we  are  told)  because  the  natural 
history  and  the  rhymes  did  not  satisfy  him,  the  verses 
are  full  of  glowing  tropical  scenery ;  but  at  that  time 
he  did  not  care  for  absolute  descriptive  accuracy.  The 
scientific  spirit,  in  fact,  had  not  yet  laid  its  hold  on 
him ;  and  the  following  stanza,  given  here  as  a  sample, 
shows  that  he  was  taking  his  juvenile  pleasure  in 
sumptuous  colouring  and  in  sounding  versification — 

"  In  the  purple  island, 

Crown 'd  with  garlands  of  cinchona, 
Lady  over  wood  and  highland, 

The  Indian  queen,  Anacaona, 
Dancing  on  the  blossomy  plain 

To  a  woodland  melody : 
Playing  with  the  scarlet  crane, 
The  dragon-fly  and  scarlet  crane, 

Beneath  the  papao  tree  ! 
Happy,  happy  was  Anacaona, 

The  beauty  of  Espagnola. 

The  golden  flower  of  Hayti !  " 

The  "  Song  of  the  three  Sisters "  is  in  the  same 
early  manner,  yet  it  clearly  presages  his  later  dithy- 


i.]  BOYHOOD  AT  CAMBRIDGE  11 

rambic  style;  and  the  blank  verse  in  the  prelude 
exhibits  the  undeveloped  quality  of  an  artist  in 
romantic  landscape-painting  — 

"  The  North  wind  fall'n,  in  the  new-starred  night 
Zidonian  Hanno,  wandering  beyond 
The  hoary  promontory  of  Soloe, 
Past  Thymiaterion  in  calme'd  bays 
Between  the  southern  and  the  western  Horn, 
Heard  neither  warbling  of  the  nightingale, 
Nor  melody  o'  the  Libyan  Lotus-flute 
Blown  seaward  from  the  shore  ;  but  from  a  slope 
That  ran  bloom-bright  into  the  Atlantic  blue, 
Beneath  a  highland  leaning  down  a  weight 
Of  cliffs,  and  zoned  below  with  cedar-shade, 
Came  voices  like  the  voices  in  a  dream 
Continuous  —  till  he  reach'd  the  outer  sea." 

Another  piece  may  be  worth  quoting,  as  the  first 
indication  of  the  brooding  philosophic  mind  that  is 
reflected  through  so  much  of  Tennyson's  poetry  — 

"  Thou  may'st  remember  what  I  said 
When  thine  own  spirit  was  at  strife 
With  thine  own  spirit.     '  From  the  tomb 
And  charnel-place  of  purpose  dead, 
Thro'  spiritual  dark  we  come 
Into  the  light  of  spiritual  life.' 

God  walk'd  the  waters  of  thy  soul, 

And  still'd  them.     When  from  change  to  change, 

Led  silently  by  power  divine, 

Thy  thought  did  scale  a  purer  range 

Of  prospect  up  to  self-control, 

My  joy  was  only  less  than  thine." 

In  these  lines  we  have  the  contemplative  mood 
struggling  into  as  yet  imperfect  metrical  expression ; 
and  the  two  foregoing  quotations  may  be  taken  to 


12  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  i. 

illustrate  two  salient  characteristics  of  all  Tenny- 
son's poetry  —  his  delight  in  external  beauty,  and  the 
inward  uneasiness  of  a  mind  oppressed  by  the  enigma 
of  human  existence,  yet  finding  solace  in  a  kind  of 
spiritual  quietism,  and  in  the  glimmer  of  light  some- 
where far  beyond  the  surrounding  darkness. 


CHAPTER   II 

POEMS,   1830-1842 

BEFORE  he  left  Cambridge  (where  he  did  not  wait  for 
a  degree),  his  "  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical,"  were  published. 
It  has  already  been  observed  that  a  group  of  original 
poets  take  up  the  whole  ground  of  their  generation ; 
they  so  act  upon  their  audience,  and  are  again  reacted 
upon  sympathetically,  that,  for  a  time,  nothing  new  is 
said  or  shaped.  This  may  account,  in  some  degree,  for 
the  barren  interval  that  may  be  noticed  in  the  annals 
of  a  country's  literature ;  there  was  one  such  interval 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  era 
of  classic  composition  had  closed,  and  the  Eomantic 
spirit,  just  born,  had  as  yet  become  hardly  articulate ; 
and  since  the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
another  dearth  of  poetry  has  set  in.  At  the  present 
moment  the  field  is  still  held  by  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, nor  has  their  challenger  yet  appeared  in  the  lists. 
When  Tennyson  came  forward  in  1830  the  mar- 
vellous constellation  of  poets  that  illumined  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century  had  almost  vanished,  in  the 
sense  of  their  work  being  finished ;  for  although 
Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Scott  were  still  alive, 
they  had  attained  immortality ;  they  were  above  and 
beyond  the  special  influences  of  an  altering  world ; 
they  could  not  interpret  or  inform  the  aspirations  or 
disquietudes  of  a  younger  generation.  Those  subtle, 

13 


14  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

indefinable  modifications  of  style  and  feeling,  con- 
tinuous yet  always  changing,  which  go  on  in  the 
world  and  around  us,  are  nowhere  more  clearly  per- 
ceptible than  in  poetry :  the  impress  of  a  great  master 
in  any  art  deeply  affects  his  immediate  successors  ;  but 
he  has  almost  always  given  his  best  to  his  contem- 
poraries in  early  manhood,  and  the  school  which  he 
has  founded  can  do  little  more  than  imitate  him. 
When,  as  in  Tennyson's  case,  he  keeps  the  field  and 
retains  his  productive  powers  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  he  may  be  likened  to  a  great  spreading  tree 
that  checks  the  upspring  of  vigorous  undergrowth ;  he 
remains  the  model  and  criterion  of  poetic  excellence. 
Yet  an  unconscious  feeling  that  the  vein  has  been 
nearly  worked  out  produces  the  desire  for  novelty; 
while  there  is  simultaneously  a  continuous  growth  of 
fresh  ideas  engendered  by  changing  views  of  life, 
which  demand  their  own  interpreter,  and  have  to  fight 
hard  for  ascendency  against  the  established  taste. 
Here  may  probably  be  found  one  reason  why  the 
established  organs  of  criticism  so  often  go  wrong  in 
their  estimate  of  an  original  writer  when  he  first  comes 
before  the  public;  they  judge  by  a  literary  standard 
that  is  becoming  superseded;  they  are  out  of  touch 
with  the  movements  of  the  advancing  party;  they 
often  maintain  a  sound  aesthetic  tradition,  but  they 
are  slow  to  amend  or  enlarge  their  laws  in  accordance 
with  new  feelings  and  methods;  they  notice  short- 
comings and  irregularities,  but  they  sometimes  lack 
discernment  of  the  very  qualities  which  attract  the 
poet's  contemporaries.1  We  know  that  even  Coleridge, 

1  An  acute  and  very  interesting  dissertation  on   the  develop- 
ment of  aesthetic  taste  and  fashion  may  be  read   in  Mr.   Arthur 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  15 

though  he  saw  much  beauty  in  Tennyson's  poems,  said 
that  he  could  scarcely  scan  the  verses,  and  passed  upon 
them  the  criticism  that  the  new  poet  had  begun  to 
write  poetry  without  very  well  knowing  what  metre 
is.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  Coleridge  said  in  his 
Table  Talk  (April  1830)  —  "  Mr.  Tennyson's  sonnets, 
such  as  I  have  read,  have  many  of  the  character- 
istic excellences  of  Wordsworth  and  Southey."  It 
was  long  before  the  Quarterly  Revieiv,  which  began 
by  treating  him  with  contempt,  could  find  anything 
better  for  Tennyson  than  sarcastic  approbation.  Yet 
the  article  in  Blackicood,  on  his  first  volume,  by  "  Chris- 
topher North,"  does  show  considerable  discrimination, 
and  on  the  whole,  although  Tennyson  naturally  resented 
it,  must  have  been  rather  to  his  advantage  than  other- 
wise ;  for  the  critic  undoubtedly  hit  with  sharp  but  not 
unkindly  ridicule  the  marks  of  affectation  and  lavish 
ornament  that  belonged  to  the  poet's  immaturity.  Most 
of  the  pieces  which  Blackwood  condemned  were  rightly 
omitted  in  subsequent  editions ;  and  in  regard  to  those 
which  he  praised,  the  judgment  has  been  generally 
upheld  by  later  opinion.  But  a  new  writer's  surest 
augury  of  future  success  is  to  be  found  in  an  ardent 
welcome  by  his  contemporaries  ;  it  is  a  sign  that  he  is 
not  a  mere  imitator,  however  artistic,  of  past  models, 
that  he  has  caught  the  spirit  and  is  quickening  the 
emotions  of  the  generation  with  which  he  has  to  live. 
Arthur  Hallam  wrote  enthusiastically  of  the  Lyrical 
Poems  in  the  Englishman's  Magazine  ;  and  in  the  West- 
minster Review  John  Bowring  hailed  the  advent  of  an 
original  poet,  with  powers  that  imposed  upon  him  high 

Balfour's  book  on  the  Foundations  of  Belief,  chap.  ii.  sections 
1  and  2. 


16  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

responsibility  for  the  use  of  them.  Some  of  the  pieces 
contained  in  this  first  edition  were  omitted  in  subse- 
quent reprints,  though  of  these  several  reappeared 
later;  and  all  that  Tennyson  decided  to  preserve 
stand  in  the  latest  collective  edition  under  the  title 
of  "  Juvenilia."  Here,  again,  as  throughout  his  later 
work,  we  have  the  poet's  tendency  to  doubts  and  to 
gloomy  meditation  on  man's  short  and  sorrowful  exist- 
ence, side  by  side  with  a  kind  of  rapturous  delight  in 
the  beauties  of  nature  and  the  glories  of  art.  We 
have  the  "  Confessions  of  a  Sensitive  Mind  "  that  finds 
no  comfort  in  creeds,  and  ends  with  the  prayer  for 

light  — 

"Oh  teach  me  yet 
Somewhat  before  the  heavy  clod 
Weighs  on  me,  and  the  busy  fret 
Of  that  sharp-headed  worm  begins 
In  the  gross  blackness  underneath," 

followed  closely  by  the  brilliant  vision  of  Oriental  splen- 
dour in  the  "  Eecollections  of  the  Arabian  Nights," 

"Then  stole  I  up,  and  trancedly 
Gazed  on  the  Persian  girl  alone, 
Serene  with  argent-lidded  eyes 
Amorous,  and  lashes  like  to  rays 
Of  darkness,  and  a  brow  of  pearl 
Tressed  with  redolent  ebony, 
In  many  a  dark  delicious  curl, 
Flowing  beneath  her  rose-hued  zone  ; 
The  sweetest  lady  of  the  time, 
Well  worthy  of  the  golden  prime 
Of  good  Haroun  Alraschid." 

Verily  a  sight  to  dispel  carking  intellectual  anxie- 
ties.    It   may   be   remarked,   however,   that    in  this 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  17 

passage,  as  also  in  the  amorous  lyrics  to  Isabel  and 
Madeline,  which  are  full  of  delicate  voluptuousness, 
the  juvenile  poet  is  too  pictorial;  his  way  of  pro- 
ducing an  image  of  lovely  woman  is  by  enumerating 
her  charms ;  he  describes  beauty  in  detail  as  it  might 
be  painted,  instead  of  describing  its  effects,  as  the 
great  poets,  from  Homer  downward,  are  usually 
content  to  do.  Although  Tennyson's  natural  artistic 
feeling  corrected  his  earlier  manner  in  this  respect, 
yet  the  propensity  to  be  descriptive,  to  elaborate  a 
picture  as  a  painter  works  upon  his  canvas,  remained 
throughout  a  leading  characteristic  of  his  poetic 
style. 

Soon  after  the  publication  of  his  first  volume 
Tennyson  made  a  journey  to  the  Pyrenees,  where  he 
had  some  secret  meetings  with  the  Spanish  refugees 
who,  under  Torrigo's  leadership,  were  concerting  the 
rash  enterprise  against  the  Spanish  government  that 
ended  with  the  military  execution  of  the  whole  party 
when  they  landed  near  Malaga  in  November  1831. 
He  returned  to  live  at  Somersby,  and  about  this  time 
more  verses  were  circulating  among  his  friends,  by 
whom,  particularly  by  Arthur  Hallam,  he  was  urged 
to  publish  them.  At  Cambridge  they  received  unani- 
mous Apostolic  benediction,  with  perpetual  reading 
and  diverse  commentaries,  until  they  were  brought 
out  toward  the  end  of  1832.  The  "Lover's  Tale," 
written  in  the  poet's  nineteenth  year,  and  partly 
printed,  was  judiciously  withdrawn  from  this  issue 
at  the  last  moment.  A  long  poem  in  blank  verse, 
betraying  immaturities  of  style  which  the  other 
pieces  showed  him  to  have  outgrown,  would  have 
marred,  as  Tennyson  himself  said,  the  complete- 


18  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ness  of  the  book,  and  would  certainly  have  added 
more  weight  than  worth  to  the  collection.  For 
this  volume  undoubtedly  contains  some  of  the  most 
exquisite  poetry  that  he  ever  wrote  —  "  Mariana  in 
the  South, "  "  The  Lady  of  Shalott, "  and  "  The  Pal- 
ace of  Art." 

His  method  of  producing  an  impression  by  group- 
ing details  was  used  with  great  skill  in  these  poems 
for  scenic  effects.  In  Mariana  in  the  Moated  Grange 
we  see  how  a  few  words  can  take  hold  of  and  en- 
chant the  fancy  until  it  conjures  up  images  of 
the  landscape,  the  mournful  aspect  of  a  decaying 
house  in  a  level  waste,  the  chill  air  of  gray  dawn, 
the  varying  moods  of  despondency  that  follow  the 
alternations  of  sun  and  shadow,  of  light  and  darkness, 
as  they  pass  before  a  solitary  watcher  who  looks 
vainly  for  some  one  who  never  comes  — 

"  About  a  stone-cast  from  the  wall 

A  sluice  with  blacken'd  waters  slept, 
And  o'er  it  many,  round  and  small, 
The  cluster'd  marish-mosses  crept. 
Hard  by  a  poplar  shook  alway, 
All  silver-green  with  gnarled  bark  : 
For  leagues  no  other  tree  did  mark 
The  level  waste,  the  rounding  gray. 
She  only  said,  '  My  life  is  dreary, 

He  cometh  not,'  she  said  ; 
She  said,  '  I  am  aweary,  aweary, 
I  would  that  I  were  dead  ! '  " 


This  profusion  of  accurate  detail  in  filling  up  the 
picture  is  very  characteristic  of  Tennyson's  manner,  so 
different  from  Wordsworth's,  who  is  usually  content  to 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  19 

paint  the  background  of  his  figures  by  a  few  strokes.1 
This  rare  power  of  giving  atmosphere  to  a  poem  —  of 
suggesting  the  correspondence  and  interaction  be- 
tween the  mind  and  its  surroundings,  between  the 
situation  and  the  subjective  feelings  —  comes  out 
even  more  forcibly  in  Mariana  in  the  South,  where 
we  have  the  troubled  sleep  in  exhaustion  produced 
by  intense  heat,  with  the  dream  of  cool  breezes  and 
running  brooks,  and  the  waking  to  consciousness  of 
bare  desolation  — 

"  She  woke  :  the  babble  of  the  stream 

Fell,  and,  without,  the  steady  glare 
Shrank  one  sick  willow  sere  and  small. 
The  river-bed  was  dusty-white  ; 
And  all  the  furnace  of  the  light 
Struck  up  against  the  blinding  wall." 

To  those  who  have  been  besieged  and  cooped  up  for 
many  hours  by  the  fierce  sun  beating  against  the  walls 
of  some  dismal  place  of  shelter,  these  lines  will  vividly 
recall  a  familiar  sensation. 

When  this  poem,  first  published  in  1832,  reappeared 
ten  years  later,  it  had  been  almost  rewritten ;  but  by 
comparing  the  two  versions  one  can  see  how  Tennyson 
had  pruned  and  condensed  his  style,  always  aiming  at 
greater  precision,  and  at  producing  the  vivid  impression 
in  fewer  words.  It  may  be  interesting  to  set  the  two 
opening  stanzas  of  each  version  side  by  side. 

1  For  example,  in  "The  Tables  Turned — An  Evening  Scene," 
there  is  but  one  descriptive  stanza  — 

"  The  sun,  above  the  mountain's  head, 
A  freshening  lustre  mellow 
Through  all  the  long  green  fields  has  spread, 
His  first  sweet  evening  yellow." 


20 


TENNYSON 


[CHAP. 


(1832) 

"  Behind  the  barren  hills  upsprung 
With  pointed  rocks  against  the 

light, 

The  crag  sharpshadowed  overhung 
Each    glaring    creek    and    inlet 

bright. 
Far,  far,  one  light  blue  ridge  was 

seen, 

Looming  like  baseless  fairyland 
Eastward  a  ship  of  burning  sand, 
Dark  rimmed  with  sea,  and  bare  of 

green. 

Down  in  the  dry  salt-marshes  stood 
That  house  dark-latticed.     Not  a 

breath 

Swayed  the  rich  vineyard  under- 
neath, 

Or  moved  the  dusty  southernwood. 
Madonna,  with  melodious  moan, 

Sang  Mariana,  night  and  morn  — 
Madonna,  lo !  I  am  all  alone, 
Love-forgotten  and  love-forlorn." 


(1842) 

'  With  one  black  shadow  at  its  feet, 
The    house    thro'    all    the    level 

shines, 
Close-latticed  to  the  brooding  heat, 

And  silent  in  its  dusty  vines : 
A  faint-blue  ridge  upon  the  right, 
An  empty  river-bed  before, 
And  shallows  on  a  distant  shore, 
In  glaring  sand  and  inlets  bright. 
But    '  Ave    Mary,'    made    she 

moan, 
And  '  Ave  Mary,'  night  and 

morn, 
And  'Ah, 'she  sang,  'to  be  all 

alone, 

To  live  forgotten,  and  love 
forlorn.' " 


In  both  versions  the  abundance  of  epithets  is  remark- 
able ;  there  is  hardly  a  substantive  unqualified ;  but 
in  the  later  version  the  description  is  less  particular, 
and  altogether  much  more  compressed. 

The  moral  of  The  Palace  of  Art  is  the  insufficiency 
of  external  beauty  to  ward  off  the  discontent,  grad- 
ually sinking  into  despair,  that  invades  a  soul  when 
it  has  planned  out  a  life  of  godlike  isolation  among 
the  most  perfect  creations  of  painting,  statuary, 
and  architecture.  Form  and  colour,  great  historical 
portraits,  splendid  landscapes,  the  purity  of  marble, 
the  rich  light  pouring  in  through  stained  glass,  adorn 
the  Palace  of  Art.  The  working  out  of  such  a  design 
strains  the  power  of  descriptive  poetry  to  its  utmost 
effort ;  for  here  it  enters  into  a  kind  of  rivalry  with 


Ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  21 

the  sister  arts  on  their  own  ground :  the  poet  must 
imagine  images ;  he  is  imitating  Nature  at  second- 
hand, and  is  among  all  the  snares  that  beset  word- 
painting.  Tennyson  attempted,  but  abandoned,  the 
arduous  task  of  "  doing  a  statue  in  verse  "  ;  he  struck 
out  the  five  stanzas  introducing  the  statues  of  Elijah 
and  Olympias;  he  shortened  his  catalogue  and  weeded 
out  his  gallery ;  and  the  alterations  which  the  poem 
underwent  in  successive  editions  show  the  labour  that 
it  cost  him.  He  thus  succeeded  in  executing  a  series 
of  exquisitely  finished  pictures,  having  in  his  mind, 
possibly,  the  Homeric  shield  of  Achilles ;  though  the 
scenes  on  the  shield  represent  movement,  as  on  a 
temple's  frieze,  whereas  Ten^^son  portrays  also  single 
incidents,  figures,  or  effects  of  still  life,  as  in  a  great 
picture  gallery  :  — 

"And  one,  a  full-fed  river  winding  slow 

By  herds  upon  an  endless  plain, 
The  ragged  rims  of  thunder  brooding  low, 

With  shadow-streaks  of  rain. 
******* 
Nor  these  alone,  but  every  landscape  fair, 

As  fit  for  every  mood  of  mind, 
Or  gay,  or  grave,  or  sweet,  or  stern,  was  there 

Not  less  than  truth  design'd. " 

In  each  stanza  the  keynote  or  motif  is  struck  with 
a  masterly  power  of  suggestion,  until  we  return  to 
Avhat  poetry  alone  can  express  —  the  soul's  delight  in 
a  representation  of  external  beauty,  and  finally  the 
intellectual  weariness  and  spiritual  prostration  of  the 
soul  among  all  this  outward  magnificence. 

"0  all  things  fair  to  sate  my  various  eyes  1 

0  shapes  and  hues  that  please  me  well  I 
0  silent  faces  of  the  Great  and  Wise, 
My  Gods,  with  whom  I  dwell  ! " 


22  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Her  godlike  isolation  sinks  into  a  feeling  of  consterna- 
tion at  her  solitude  — 

"As  in  strange  lands  a  traveller  walking  slow, 

In  doubt  and  great  perplexity, 
A  little  before  moon-rise  hears  the  low 
Moan  of  an  unknown  sea." 

Perfection  of  culture,  Art  for  Art's  sake,  has  no  deep 
root  in  the  heart  of  man,  and  flowers  but  to  fade 
rapidly ;  it  strikes  a  deep  root  only  when  it  gives  a 
moral  representation  of  life. 

Yet  nothing  is  more  rare  or  difficult  than  the  pres- 
entation of  some  general  truth,  in  prose  or  verse, 
by  a  story  with  inner  significance,  like  the  parables 
of  a  religious  teacher.  By  symbolism,  Avhich  is  a  more 
delicate  instrument  than  metaphor,  the  second  term 
of  the  comparison,  the  application  of  the  narrative,  is 
intimated  but  not  expressed.  If  the  meaning  is  vague 
or  too  much  hidden,  it  is  missed ;  if  it  is  brought  out 
too  obviously,  the  mysterious  charm  disappears.  In 
The  Lady  of  Shalott  we  are  not  far  below  the  high- 
water  mark  of  symbolic  poetry,  the  art  which  one  of 
the  latest  schools  of  French  poetry  has  been  practising 
with  doubtful  success,  being  foiled  mainly  by  the  in- 
curable lucidity  and  precision  of  the  French  language. 
The  final  version  of  this  poem  shows  much  less  revision 
than  in  most  of  his  early  writings,  although  the  careful 
pruning  away  of  anything  that  might  sound  trivial  or 
familiar  is  observable  in  such  alterations  as  that  whereby 
the  Lady  now  writes  her  name  "  round  about  the  prow," 
instead  of  "  below  the  stern,"  where  she  wrote  it  origi- 
nally, and  where  an  ordinary  boatman  would  have 
painted  it.  And  since  The  Lady  of  Shalott  is  one 
of  Tennyson's  masterpieces,  we  may  select  it  as  an 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  23 

example  of  his  genius  at  a  period  when  he  had  brought 
the  form  and  conception  of  his  poetry  up  to  a  point 
which  he  never  afterward  surpassed. 

Undoubtedly  his  work  is  throughout  elaborate,  in 
the  sense  that  he  meditated  long  over  the  composition, 
and  spared  no  pains  to  attain  perfection.  Tennyson 
arranged  and  polished  indefatigably  his  blank  verse, 
that  purely  English  metre  which  more  than  any  other 
gives  scope  to  scientific  construction,  disdaining  the 
adventitious  aid  of  rhyme.  The  normal  line  consists, 
as  every  one  knows,  of  five  iambics  marked  not  only  by 
quantity  but  also  by  accentuation ;  and  it  is  the  mobil- 
ity of  the  English  accent,  as  compared  with  the  regu- 
larity of  prosodial  notation,  that  gives  such  freedom  to 
English  verse,  and  is  one  of  the  elements  that  combine 
to  make  our  language  so  excellent  for  poetry.  And 
the  skill  of  the  consummate  artist  in  blank  verse  finds 
its  triumph  in  the  infinite  variety  of  measured  sounds 
which  he  can  draw  from  a  five-stringed  instrument 
that  seems  easy  to  play  upon,  yet  is  droning  and 
tedious  in  all  but  a  few  hands.1 

The  return,  so  noticeable  in  English  poets  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  to  the  divine  and  heroic  myths  of 
ancient  Greece,  may  be  said  to  have  begun  with  Keats, 
who  endowed  them  with  new  life  by  the  ardent  play  of 
his  romantic  imagination,  and  did  it  none  the  worse 
for  his  slight  acquaintance  with  the  originals.  Tenny- 
son continued  a  similar  treatment  of  them  with  much 
more  accurate  knowledge.  The  concrete  and  sculp- 
tured figures  of  the  antique  legend  or  fable,  in  OEnone, 
Ulysses,  and  Tithonus,  were  endued  with  warmth  and 

iSee  Chapters  on  English  Metre,  by  J.  B.  Mayor  (1886). 


24  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

fresh  colour  by  becoming  the  impersonations  of  the 
impulses  and  affections  of  modern  life  —  love  unre- 
quited, lassitude,  restlessness,  the  roaming  spirit,  the 
ennui  of  old  age,  philosophic  ardour  or  serenity. 

The  poem  of  CEnone  is  the  first  of  Tennyson's  elab- 
orate essays  in  a  metre  over  which  he  afterwards  ob- 
tained an  eminent  command.  It  is  also  the  first  of  his 
idylls  and  of  his  classical  studies,  with  their  melodious 
rendering  of  the  Homeric  epithets  and  the  composite 
words,  which  Tennyson  had  the  art  of  coining  after 
the  Greek  manner  ("lily-cradled,"  "river-sundered," 
"  dewy -dashed  ")  for  compact  description  or  ornament. 
Several  additions  were  made  in  a  later  edition;  and 
the  corrections  then  made  show  with  what  sedulous 
care  the  poet  diversified  the  structure  of  his  lines, 
changing  the  pauses  that  break  the  monotonous  run  of 
blank  verse,  and  avoiding  the  use  of  weak  terminals 
when  the  line  ends  in  the  middle  of  a  sentence.  The 
opening  of  the  poem  was  in  this  manner  decidedly 
improved ;  yet  one  may  judge  that  the  finest  passages 
are  still  to  be  found  almost  as  they  stood  in  the  orig- 
inal version;  and  the  concluding  lines,  in  which  the 
note  of  anguish  culminates,  are  left  untouched :  — 

"  O  mother,  hear  me  yet  before  I  die. 
Hear  me,  0  earth.    I  will  not  die  alone, 
Lest  their  shrill  happy  laughter  come  to  me 
Walking  the  cold  and  starless  road  of  Death 
Uncomforted,  leaving  my  ancient  love 
With  the  Greek  woman." 

Nevertheless  the  blank  verse  of  (Enone  lacks  the 
even  flow  and  harmonious  balance  of  entire  sections  in 
the  Morte  d'Arthur  or  Ulysses,  where  the  lines  are 
swift  or  slow,  rise  to  a  point  and  fall  gradually,  in 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  26 

cadences  arranged  to  correspond  with  the  dramatic 
movement,  showing  that  the  poet  has  extended  and 
perfected  his  metrical  resources.  The  later  style  is 
simplified;  he  has  rejected  cumbrous  metaphor;  he 
is  less  sententious ;  he  has  pruned  away  the  flowery 
exuberance  and  lightened  the  sensuous  colour  of  his 
earlier  composition. 

In  the  Lotos-Eaters  we  have  an  old  Greek  fable  of 
wandering  sailors  reaching  an  unknown  land  of  fruit 
and  flowers  ;  and  the  poem's  rich  long-drawn  melody, 
with  its  profusion  of  scenic  description,  is  in  strong 
contrast  to  the  quiet  line  and  feeling  of  the  Homeric 
narrative ;  where  the  impression  is  created  by  describ- 
ing, not  the  environment,  but  its  effect  upon  the  men. 
"Whosoever  did  eat  the  honey-sweet  fruit  of  the  lotos 
had  no  more  wish  to  bring  tidings  nor  to  come  back, 
but  there  he  chose  to  abide  with  the  lotos-eating  men, 
ever  feeding  on  the  lotos,  and  forgetful  of  his  home- 
ward way."  Out  of  this  the  modern  poet  creates  a 
splendid  choric  song,  of  way-worn  mariners  overcome 
by  dreamy  languor  in  a  beautiful  island,  to  whom  their 
homes  and  their  fatherland  are  becoming  no  more  than 
a  far-off  memory.  It  may  be  that  the  ancient  myth  is 
a  marvellous  tradition  of  some  real  incident,  when  a 
shipwrecked  crew  settled  down  upon  some  island  in 
a  climate  and  among  a  people  not  unlike  those  which 
were  discovered  by  the  first  European  adventurers  in 
the  South  Pacific  Ocean ;  for  even  in  the  story  of  the 
Mutiny  of  the  Bounty  we  can  trace  the  influence  of 
lotos-eating  upon  British  sailors.  The  concluding 
strophe  of  the  Ode  as  it  now  stands  was  substituted  in 
1843  for  lines  of  a  different  structure  and  very  inferior 
merit.  The  gods  of  Epicurus  are  the  proper  divinities 


26  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

of  the  lotos-eaters ;  they  look  down  carelessly  through 
the  clouds  at  the  strife  and  misery  of  the  world  — 

' '  Over  wasted  lands, 
Blight  and  famine,  plague  and  earthquake,  roaring  deeps  and 

fiery  sands, 
Clanging  fights,   and  flaming  towns,   and  sinking  ships,  and 

praying  hands." 

In  the  picture  of  luxurious  repose  as  the  ultimate  bliss 
attainable  both  in  this  world  and  in  heaven  we  have 
the  shadow  of  the  earth  projected  on  the  sky;  it  is 
that  natural  reflection  of  human  experience  and  desires 
which  is  the  common  source  of  all  primitive  concep- 
tions of  a  future  existence. 

The  Quarterly  Itevieiv 1  noticed  these  poems  in  a  sar- 
castic article  (by  Kinglake,  the  author  of  Eotheri)  that 
missed  all  the  beauties,  yet  hit  the  blots.  That  the 
criticism,  although  short-sighted  enough  as  an  appre- 
ciation, was  yet  salutary,  is  proved  by  the  corrections 
afterwards  made  by  Tennyson  in  passages  where  the 
thin  partition  that  divides  simplicity  from  triviality 
had  been  overstepped,  or  where  the  metre  had  not  yet 
attained  the  strength  and  sure  harmonic  tones  of  his 
later  workmanship.  These  old-fashioned  reviewers, 
like  the  headmasters  who  ruled  great  public  schools 
by  incessant  castigation,  laboured  honestly  in  their 
vocation  of  maintaining  the  classic  traditions ;  and 
there  was  a  masculine  common-sense  in  their  disci- 
pline that  was  by  no  means  unwholesome.  But  for  an 
example  of  impenitent  conservatism  and  of  insensi- 
bility to  true  genius,  because  it  was  new,  the  following 
sentence  taken  from  an  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review 2 
upon  the  poems  of  Monckton  Millies  is  not  easily  to 
be  matched :  — 
1 1839. 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  27 

"  We  are  quite  sure  that  he  [Milnes]  will  hereafter  obey 
one  good  precept  in  an  otherwise  doubtful  decalogue  :  — 

'Thou  shall  believe  in  Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,' 

and  regret  few  sins  more  bitterly  than  the  homage  he  has 
now  rendered  at  the  fantastic  shrines  of  such  baby  idols  as 
Mr.  John  Keats  and  Mr.  Alfred  Tennyson." 

We  have  here  the  men  who  adore  the  great  image  of 
authority,  and  denounce  all  novelties  as  heretical.  The 
reviewer  adopts  Byron's  creed,  but  overlooks  Byron's 
own  triumphant  desertion  of  it;  for  in  his  finest  poems 
there  is  no  trace  of  the  great  masters  whom  Byron 
professed  to  worship.  He  received  a  well-merited 
rebuke  from  J.  S.  Mill,  who  wrote  in  the  London  Review 
(1835)  an  article  condemning  the  short-sighted  incom- 
petency  of  the  Quarterly's  critic,  recognising  Tennyson 
as  a  true  artist  of  high  promise,  and  passing  upon  The 
Lady  of  Shalott  a  judgment  in  which  the  present 
writer  ventures  entirely  to  agree :  — 

"Except  that  the  versification  is  less  exquisite,  'The 
Lady  of  Shalott'  is  entitled  to  a  place  by  the  side  of  the 
'  Ancient  Mariner'  and  '  Christabel.'  " 

For  it  should  not  have  been  difficult  to  perceive  that 
in  this  second  volume  of  poems  the  promise  and 
potency  of  Tennyson's  genius  were  clearly  visible,  and 
that  the  ascent  was  gradual  because  the  aims  were 
high.  The  blemishes  often  signified  no  more  than 
exuberant  strength ;  and  James  Montgomery's  observa- 
tion of  him  at  this  stage  is  generally  true  as  a  stand- 
ing test  of  latent  powers  in  a  beginner :  — 

"  He  has  very  wealthy  and  luxurious  thought  and  great 
beauty  of  expression,  and  is  a  poet.  But  there  is  plenty  of 
room  for  improvement,  and  I  would  have  it  so.  Your  trim 


28  TENNYSON  [CHAP 

correct  young  writers  seldom  turn  out  well.  A  young  poet 
should  have  a  great  deal  which  he  can  afford  to  throw  away 
as  he  gets  older."1 

Although  Tennyson's  father  died  in  1831,  he 
remained  with  the  family  at  Somersby  Rectory  until 
1837,  making  occasional  visits  elsewhere,  to  Mable- 
thorpe  on  the  bleak  Lincolnshire  coast,  to  London,  and 
once  crossing  the  sea  to  Holland  for  a  journey  up  the 
Rhine  to  Cologne  and  Bonn.  It  was  a  tumultuous 
period  in  Continental  no  less  than  in  English  politics ; 
and  though  Tennyson  welcomed  the  Reform  movement 
at  home,  he  was  in  some  trepidation  lest  it  might  open 
the  floodgates  of  democracy  upon  the  foundations 
of  ancient  institutions.  "The  instigating  spirit  of 
Reform,"  he  wrote,  "  will  bring  on  the  confiscation  of 
Church  property,  and  may  be  the  downfall  of  the 
Church  altogether ;  but  the  existence  of  the  sect  of  St. 
Simonists  in  France  is  at  once  a  proof  of  the  immense 
mass  of  evil  that  is  extant  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  a  focus  which  gathers  all  its  rays."2  His  hope  of 
never  seeing  "  St.  Simon  in  the  Church  of  Christ "  has 
at  any  rate  been  amply  fulfilled ;  and  the  mere  appre- 
hension shows  that  he  had  not  yet,  naturally,  measured 
the  difference  between  a  religion  and  a  scientific  phi- 
losophy, or  the  former's  incalculable  superiority  in  the 
domain  of  things  spiritual.  In  religion,  as  in  politics, 
Tennyson's  convictions  gradually  settled  down  into  a 
hopeful  optimism,  occasionally  shaken  by  fits  of 
splenetic  doubt  and  of  discomfiture  at  the  spectacle  of 
human  errors  and  misery.  He  believed  in  the  remote 
eventual  perfectibility  of  creeds  and  also  of  constitu- 
tions ;  but  about  this  time  the  vanward  clouds  were 
1  Memoir.  2Ibid. 


H.J  POEMS,  1830-1842  29 

gathering  on  the  political  horizon,  and  he  was  never 
without  some  fear  lest  society  might  be  caught  unpre- 
pared in  some  sudden  storm  :  — 

"  Slowly  comes  a  hungry  people,  as  a  lion,  creeping  nigher, 
Glares  at  one  that  nods  and  winks  behind  a  slowly-dying  fire." 

This  habit  of  cautious  moderation  and  profound 
distrust  of  popular  impatience,  the  dislike  of  excess 
or  audacity  in  opinion  which  belongs  to  the  contem- 
plative artist,  possessed  Tennyson  from  youth  to  age, 
and  occasionally  lowered  the  temperature  of  his  verse. 
Yet  Tennyson,  like  Burke,  had  great  confidence  in  the 
common-sense  and  inbred  good-nature  of  the  English 
people.  Stagnation,  he  once  said,  is  more  dangerous 
than  revolution.  As  he  was  throughout  consistently 
the  poet  of  the  via  media  in  politics,  the  dignified  con- 
stitutional Laureate,  so  he  was  spared  the  changes  that 
passed  over  the  opinions  of  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and 
Coleridge,  who  were  Radicals  in  their  youth,  and 
declined  into  elderly  Tories.  The  temper  of  the  times 
affected  his  poetry  in  a  contrary  way  ;  for  his  ardour 
rather  increased  with  his  age.  He  attained  manhood 
in  the  middle  of  the  calm  period  that  followed  the 
long,  tumultuous  years  when  all  Europe  was  one  vast 
battlefield,  when  the  ardent  spirits  of  Byron  and 
Shelley  had  been  fired  by  the  fierce  rallying  of  the 
European  nations  against  Napoleon.  It  was  the 
Crimean  War,  twenty  years  later,  that  first  brought 
out  Tennyson  upon  the  battlefield;  while  at  home  the 
subsidence  of  violent  Radicalism  encouraged  his  Lib- 
eral attitude  toward  internal  politics. 

In  the  autumn  of  1833  came  the  news  that  Arthur 
Hallam,  his  dearest  friend,  who  had  been  engaged  to 


30  TENNYSON  [CIIAP. 

Emily  Tennyson,  had  died  suddenly  at  Vienna,  his 
last  letter  to  Tennyson  being  dated  a  week  before  his 
death.  Arthur  Hallam  may  be  counted  among  those 
men  whom  the  unanimous  consent  of  all  their  fellows 
marks  out  for  high  future  distinction,  and  whose 
brilliant  opening  upon  life,  closed  abruptly  by  early 
death,  invests  their  memory  with  a  kind  of  romance, 
explaining  and  almost  justifying  the  antique  concep- 
tion of  Fate  and  divine  envy.  Tennyson's  heart  was 
pierced  with  bitter  sorrow,  and  filled  with  a  sense  of 
life's  dreary  insignificance.  He  wrote  the  first  sec- 
tions of  his  famous  elegy  upon  his  friend,  and  began 
that  poem,  The  Two  Voices,  which  takes  up  again  the 
ancient  strain  of  mortal  man  wrestling  with  the  tempta- 
tion to  despair,  when  irremediable  misfortune  seems 
to  render  life  nothing  worth,  a  momentary  existence 
destined  to  vanish  into  the  cold  oblivion  that  hides  so 
many  generations  of  the  past. 

The  Memorial  poem  underwent  many  years  of  incu- 
bation. In  the  meantime  Tennyson's  mind  was  also 
on  other  poetic  subjects.  Sir  Henry  Taylor  published 
in  1834  his  drama  of  Philip  van  Artevelde,  with  a 
preface  containing  the  author's  views  upon  modern 
poetry  in  general,  and  some  criticisms  upon  Byron  and 
Shelley  in  particular.  The  essence  of  his  dissertation 
was  that  "  poetry  is  Keason  self-sublimed,"  that 
Byron's  verse  was  too  unreasonably  passionate,  the 
product  of  personal  vanity  unbridled  by  sober  sense 
and  study ;  and  that  Shelley  let  his  fancy  run  riot  in 
melodious  rhapsodies.  It  was  the  somewhat  austere 
judgment  of  a  cultured  intellect  upon  the  romantic 
revival,  which  was  representing  the  demand  for  liberty 
and  a  wider  range  of  ideas  in  art,  as  the  Liberal  move- 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  31 

ment  did  in  politics,  among  the  poets  whom  Taylor 
designated  as  the  Phantastic  school.  Tennyson's 
observation  upon  these  criticisms  is  just  and  far- 
seeing  :  — 

"  I  close  with  Taylor  in  most  that  he  says  of  modern  po- 
etry, though  it  may  be  that  he  does  not  take  sufficiently  into 
consideration  the  peculiar  strength  evolved  by  such  writers 
as  Byron  and  Shelley,  who,  however  mistaken  they  may  be, 
did  yet  give  the  world  another  heart  and  new  pulses,  and  so 
we  are  kept  going.  Blessed  be  those  who  grease  the  wheels 
of  the  old  world,  insomuch  that  to  move  on  is  better  than 
standing  still."  1 

No  man,  as  we  know,  was  less  disposed  than 
Tennyson  to  undervalue  intellectual  serenity  or  rhyth- 
mic perfection ;  yet  he  saw  that  Byron,  with  the  fiery 
impetus  of  his  careless  verse,  and  Shelley,  with  his 
strong-winged  nights  into  the  realms  of  phantasy, 
were  men  of  daring  genius  who  had  quickened  the 
pace  and  widened  the  imaginative  range  of  English 
poetry. 

During  these  years  Tennyson  was  living  in  retire- 
ment at  Somersby.  His  correspondence,  then  and 
always,  appears  to  have  been  so  rare  and  fitful  that  it 
creates  a  serious  difficulty  for  the  ordinary  biographer, 
who  misses  the  connected  series  of  letters  that  provide 
so  important  and  interesting  a  clue  to  be  followed  in 
tracing  the  incidents,  the  opinion  on  passing  events, 
the  interchange  of  literary  and  political  impressions, 
in  the  lives  of  illustrious  or  notable  men.  For  paucity 
of  correspondence  Tennyson  is  indeed  singular  among 
modern  English  poets.  Cowper,  Scott,  and  Byron 
stand  in  the  foremost  rank  of  our  letter-writers,  and 
their  correspondence  is  in  volumes;  while  Matthew 
1  Memoir. 


32  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Arnold  has  actually  predicted  that  Shelley's  letters 
might  survive  his  poems.  Coleridge's  familiar  letters 
are  amusing,  pathetic,  and  reflective,  full  of  a  kind 
of  divine  simplicity ;  he  is  alternately  indignant  and 
remorseful;  he  soars  to  themes  transcendent,  and 
sinks  anon  to  the  confession  of  his  errors  and  embar- 
rassments. Wordsworth's  letters  contain  rural  scenery 
and  lofty  moral  sentiment.  They  all  belonged  to  the 
rapidly  diminishing  class  of  eminent  men  who  have 
freely  poured  their  real  sentiments  and  thoughts  out 
of  their  brain  into  correspondence  with  friends,  giving 
their  best  without  keeping  back  their  worst,  so  that 
we  can  follow  the  stages  of  their  lives  and  thoughts ; 
and  the  letters  thus  preserve  for  us  the  clear-cut 
stamp  of  their  individuality.  The  occasional  letters 
of  Tennyson  given  in  the  Memoirs  are  characteristic 
and  entertaining,  thrown  off  usually  in  the  light  play 
of  wit  and  good-humour ;  but  for  early  glimpses  of 
him  we  have  to  rely  mainly  upon  the  letters  or  remi- 
niscences of  his  friends.  In  1835  he  was  with  the 
Speddings  in  the  Lake  country,  where  he  met  Hartley 
Coleridge,  who,  "  after  the  fourth  bottom  of  gin,  delib- 
erately thanked  Heaven  for  having  brought  them  ac- 
quainted," 1  and  wrote  a  sonnet  in  celebration  thereof. 
A  visit  to  Wordsworth  at  Rydal  Mount  he  would  not 
then  be  persuaded  to  undertake,  though  the  Laureate 
of  the  day  and  his  successor  did  come  together  at  a 
dinner  party  a  few  years  later.  Mr.  Aubrey  de  Vere 
has  described  the  meeting ; 2  and  he  has  told  us  that 
Wordsworth  soon  afterwards  wrote  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend  that  Tennyson  was  "  decidedly  the  first  of  our 
living  poets."  In  connection  with  this  incident  Mr. 
1  Memoir.  2Ibid. 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  33 

de  Vere  is  reminded  of  a  conversation  with  Tennyson, 
who  was  enthusiastic  over  the  songs  of  Burns  —  "  You 
forget,  for  their  sake,  those  stupid  things,  his  serious 
pieces."  The  same  day  Mr.  de  Vere  met  Wordsworth, 
who  praised  Burns  even  more  vehemently  than  Tenny- 
son had  done,  but  ended  —  "  Of  course,  I  refer  to  his 
serious  efforts;  those  foolish  little  amatory  songs  of 
his  one  has  to  forget." 

After  1837  the  Tennyson  family  changed  their  resi- 
dence more  than  once,  first  migrating  from  Somersby 
to  High  Beech  in  Epping  Forest,  and  thence  in  1840 
to  Tunbridge  Wells.  Tennyson  made  various  excur- 
sions about  England ;  and  at  Warwick  he  met  again 
FitzGerald,  who  had  been  with  him  in  the  Lake  coun- 
try, when  they  visited  together  Kenilworth  and  Strat- 
f ord-on-Avon,  where  Tennyson,  seized  with  enthusiasm, 
wrote  his  name  among  those  scribbled  all  over  the 
room  in  which  Shakespeare  was  born — "a  little 
ashamed  of  it  afterwards."  He  came  by  Coventry  to 
London,  and  composed  Godiva,  of  which  Charles 
Sumner,  the  American,  wrote  to  Monckton  Milnes 
that  it  was  "  unequalled  as  a  narrative  in  verse  " ;  he 
also  went  to  Bolton  Abbey  and  North  Whales,  leading 
a  tranquil  and  contemplative  life  in  a  period  of  politi- 
cal and  ecclesiastical  agitation,  sedulously  husbanding 
his  powers,  meditating  on  the  problems  of  existence, 
and  collecting  impressions  in  his  journeys  about  Eng- 
land. He  was  far  from  being  indifferent  to  current 
politics  or  theological  controversies ;  he  took  a  close 
interest  in  the  Oxford  Movement ;  nor  did  he  make 
light  of  the  grievances  and  demonstrations  of  the 
Chartists.  Yet  his  attitude  seems  to  have  been  that 
of  the  philosophic  spectator  who  surveys  from  a  height 


34  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

the  field  of  action ;  he  did  not  fling  himself  into  the 
fighting  line,  like  Byron  or  Shelley,  whose  poetry 
glows  with  the  fiery  enthusiasm  of  combatants  in  the 
strife  over  political  or  religious  causes  and  ideas,  or 
like  Coleridge,  who  declared  that  all  the  social  evils 
of  his  day  arose  from  a  false  and  godless  empiricism, 
and  anxiously  expounded  to  Lord  Liverpool  the  essen- 
tial connection  between  speculative  philosophy  and 
practical  politics.1  The  two  short  poems  that  were 
suggested  (we  are  told)  by  the  Reform  agitation  are 
in  a  tone  of  moderate  conservatism :  he  praises  the 
freedom  that  slowly  broadens  down  from  precedent  to 
precedent ;  he  despises  the  "  falsehood  of  extremes  " ; 
and  just  as  in  Locksley  Hall  may  be  noticed  a  listen- 
ing fear  of  mob  rule,  so  in  his  poem  Love  thou  thy 
Land,  he  is  a  caiitious  Liberal,  ready  to  do  much  for 
the  people,  but  very  little  by  the  people  — 

"  But  pamper  not  a  hasty  time, 
Nor  feed  with  crude  imaginings 
The  herd,  wild  hearts  and  feeble  wings, 
That  every  sophister  can  lime  "  — 

and  his  abhorrence  of  precipitate  politics  comes  out  in 
almost  every  allusion  to  France. 

In  his  religious  speculations  he  ponders  over  the 
question  why  God  has  created  souls,  knoAving  that 
they  would  sin  and  suffer,  and  finds  it  unanswerable 
except  in  that  firm  hope  of  universal  good  as  the  out- 
come, which  is  the  reasoned  conclusion  of  those  who 
find  the  design  of  human  life  in  this  world  unintelli- 
gible, unless  another  world  is  brought  in  to  redress 
the  balance,  and  which  is  thus  the  mainspring  and 
support  of  belief  in  a  future  existence.  There  are 

1See  a  wonderful  letter  in  Lord  Liverpool's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  302. 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  35 

passages  in  the  letters  written  about  this  time  to  Miss 
Einily  Sellwood,  during  the  long  engagement  that  pre- 
ceded their  marriage,  that  indicate  the  bent  of  his 
mind  toward  philosophic  questions,  with  frequent 
signs  of  that  half-conscious  fellow-feeling  with  natu- 
ral things,  the  "  dim,  mystic  sympathies  with  tree  and 
hill  reaching  far  back  into  childhood,"  that  sense  of 
life  in  all  sound  and  motion,  whereby  poetry  is  drawn 
upward,  by  degrees  and  instinctively,  into  the  region 
of  the  higher  Pantheism.  "  Sculpture,"  he  writes, 
"  is  particularly  good  for  the  mind ;  there  is  a  height 
and  divine  stillness  about  it  which  preaches  peace  to 
our  stormy  passions." 1  Nor  has  any  English  poet 
availed  himself  more  skilfully  of  a  language  that  is 
rich  in  metaphors  consisting  of  words  that  so  far 
retain  their  primary  meaning  as  to  suggest  a  picture 
while  they  convey  a  thought. 

The  preservation  of  the  rough  drafts  and  rejected 
versions  of  passages  and  lines  in  poems  of  high  finish, 
for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  artist  at  work,  may  not 
be  altogether  fair  to  him,  and  the  practice  in  some 
recent  editions  of  giving  them  in  footnotes  is  rather 
distracting  to  those  readers  who  enjoy  a  fine  picture 
without  asking  how  the  colours  are  mixed.  And 
when  each  page  of  fine  verse  is  also  garnished  with 
references,  with  minute  explanations  of  the  most 
familiar  allusion,  and  with  parallel  quotations  from 
other  standard  poets,  the  worried  reader  is  painfully 
reminded  of  his  early  school-books.  Tennyson's 
poems  have  never  yet  been  footnoted  in  this  fashion, 
although  no  poet  has  corrected  or  revised  more 
diligently ;  but  the  successive  editions,  which  bear 
1  Memoir. 


86  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

witness  to  his  alterations,  have  been  studiously  com- 
pared more  than  once.  To  students  of  method,  to  the 
fellow-craftsman,  and  to  the  literary  virtuoso,  the 
variant  readings  may  often  be  of  substantial  interest 
for  the  light  they  throw  on  the  tendencies  and  predi- 
lections of  taste  which  are  the  formative  influences 
upon  style  in  prose  or  poetry.  It  is  from  such  mate- 
rials that  one  can  follow  the  processes  of  Tennyson's 
composition,  the  forming  and  maturing  of  his  style, 
the  fastidious  discrimination  which  dictated  his  rejec- 
tion of  any  work  that  either  did  not  throughout  satisfy 
a  high  standard,  or  else  marred  a  poem's  symmetrical 
proportion  by  superfluity,  overweight,  or  the  undue 
predominance  of  some  note  in  the  general  harmony. 
One  may  regret  that  some  fine  stanzas  or  lines  should 
have  been  thus  expunged,  yet  the  impartial  critic 
would  probably  confirm  the  decision  in  every  instance. 
He  acted,  as  we  perceive,  inexorably  upon  his  rule  that 
the  artist  is  known  by  his  self-limitation,  feeling  cer- 
tain, as  he  once  said,  that  "  if  I  mean  to  make  any 
mark  in  the  world,  it  must  be  by  shortness,  for 
the  men  before  me  had  been  so  diffuse."  Only  the 
concise  and  perfect  work,  he  thought  at  this  time, 
would  last ;  and  "  hundreds  of  verses  were  blown  up 
the  chimney  with  his  pipe  smoke,  or  were  written 
down  and  thrown  into  the  fire  as  not  being  perfect 
enough."  l  Not  many  poems  could  have  spared 
the  four  stanzas  with  which  the  "  Dream  of  Fair 
Women"  originally  began,  and  which  E.  FitzGerald 
quotes  in  an  early  letter  as  in  Tennyson's  "  best  style, 
no  fretful  epithet,  not  a  word  too  much."  It  opens 
thus :  — 

1  Memoir. 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  37 

"  As  when  a  man  that  sails  in  a  balloon, 

Down-looking  sees  the  solid  shining  ground 
Stream  from  beneath  him  in  the  broad  blue  noon, 
Tilth,  hamlet,  mead,  and  mound : 
******* 
So,  lifted  high,  the  poet  at  his  will 

Lets  the  great  world  flit  from  him,  seeing  all, 
Higher,  thro'  secret  splendours  mounting  still, 
Self-poised,  nor  fears  to  fall." 

Yet  one  can  see  that  the  simile  is  unnecessary,  and  to 
a  certain  degree  out  of  line  with  the  general  conception 
of  a  vision  that  passes  in  the  night.  He  would  strike 
out  stanzas  because  they  made  a  poem  too  "  long- 
backed  " ;  and  he  resolutely  condemned  to  excision 
from  the  original  Palace  of  Art  some  excellent  verses, 
merely  to  give  the  composition  even  balance,  and  to 
trim  the  poem  like  a  boat.  This  poem,  in  fact,  was  in 
a  large  part  rewritten,  for  Tennyson  evidently  thought 
that  too  much  brilliancy  and  opulence  in  the  decoration 
of  his  Palace  might  run  into  gorgeousness.  He  with- 
drew two  or  three  such  stanzas  as  this :  — 

"  With  piles  of  flavorous  fruit  in  basket-twine 

Of  gold,  upheaped,  crushing  down 
Musk-scented  blooms,  all  taste,  grape,  gourd,  or  pine 
In  bunch,  or  single  grown." 

And  this  other  stanza  may  have  been  omitted  because 
the  didactic  or  scientific  note  is  rather  too  prominent :  — 

"  All  nature  widens  upward.    Evermore 

The  simpler  essence  lower  lies, 
More  complex  is  more  perfect,  owning  more 
Diicourse,  more  widely  wise." 

At  any  rate,  the  preservation  of  these  rejections  (in 
the  Memoir}  serves  to  illustrate  the  gradual  develop- 
ment of  consummate  technique ;  nor  has  it  in  this 


38  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

instance  damaged  the  artist,  for  we  may  rank  Tenny- 
son among  the  very  few  poets  whose  reputation  would 
rather  gain  than  suffer  by  the  posthumous  appearance 
of  pieces  that  the  author  had  deliberately  withheld  or 
withdrawn. 

From  1833  the  publication  of  more  poetry  was  sus- 
pended, though  not  the  writing  of  it.  In  one  of 
E.  FitzGerald's  letters  (March  1842)  we  have  the 
following  passage :  — 

"  Poor  Tennyson  has  got  home  some  of  his  proof-sheets, 
and  now  that  his  verses  are  in  hard  print,  he  thinks  them 
detestable.  There  is  much  I  had  always  told  him  of — his 
great  fault  of  being  too  full  and  complicated  —  which  he 
now  sees,  or  fancies  he  sees,  and  wishes  he  had  never  been 
persuaded  to  print.  But  with  all  his  faults,  he  will  publish 
such  a  volume  as  has  never  been  published  since  the  time  of 
Keats,  and  which,  once  published,  will  never  be  suffered  to 
die.  This  is  my  prophecy,  for  I  live  before  Posterity." 

And  indeed  the  fallow  leisure  of  this  period  bore  an 
ample  harvest ;  for  after  an  interval  of  ten  years  the 
full  growth  and  range  of  his  genius  came  out  in  the 
two  volumes  of  1842.  The  first  of  these  contained  a 
selection  from  the  poems  of  1830,  with  others,  much 
altered,  which  had  appeared  in  1832,  and  several  new 
pieces.  In  the  second  volume  all  was  entirely  new, 
except  three  stanzas  of  "  The  Day  Dream." 

"This  decade,"  writes  his  biographer,  "  wrought  a  marvel- 
lous abatement  of  my  father's  real  fault  —  the  tendency, 
arising  from  the  fulness  of  mind  which  had  not  yet  learned 
to  master  its  resources  freely,  to  overcrowd  his  compositions 
with  imagery,  to  which  may  be  added  over-indulgence  in  the 
luxury  of  the  senses."  1 

The  criticism  is  just,  for  these  new  poems  did  undoubt- 
edly attest  the  poet's  rapid  development  of  mind  and 
1  Memoir. 


n.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  39 

methods,  the  expansion  of  his  range  of  thought,  his 
increasing  command  over  the  musical  instrument,  and 
the  admirable  vigour  and  beauty  that  his  composition 
was  now  disclosing.  He  had  the  singular  advantage, 
rarely  enjoyed  so  early  in  a  poetic  career,  of  being  sur- 
rounded by  enthusiastic  friends  who  were  also  very 
competent  judges  of  his  work,  whose  unanimous  ver- 
dict must  have  given  his  heart  real  confidence ;  so  that 
the  few  spurts  of  cold  water  thrown  on  him  by  pro- 
fessional reviewers  no  longer  troubled  him  seriously. 
The  darts  of  such  enemies  might  hardly  reach  or 
wound  one  round  whom  such  men  as  Hallam,  James 
Spedding,  Edward  FitzGerald,  the  two  Lushingtons, 
Blakesley,  and  Julius  Hare  rallied  eagerly.  Words- 
worth, who  at  first  had  been  slow  to  appreciate,  having 
afterwards  listened  to  two  poems  recited  by  Aubrey 
de  Vere,  did  "  acknowledge  that  they  were  very  noble 
in  thought,  with  a  diction  singularly  stately."  Even 
Carlyle,  who  had  implored  the  poet  to  stick  to  prose, 
was  vanquished,  and  wrote  (1842)  a  letter  so  vividly 
characteristic  as  to  justify,  or  excuse,  another  quotation 
from  the  Memoir  :  — 

"DEAR  TENNYSON, — Wherever  this  find  you,  may  it 
find  you  well,  may  it  come  as  a  friendly  greeting  to  you.  I 
have  just  been  reading  your  Poems  ;  I  have  read  certain  of 
them  over  again,  and  mean  to  read  them  over  and  over  till 
they  become  my  poems ;  this  fact,  with  the  inferences  that 
lie  in  it,  is  of  such  emphasis  in  me,  I  cannot  keep  it  to  my- 
self, but  must  needs  acquaint  you  too  with  it.  If  you  knew 
what  my  relation  has  been  to  the  thing  call'd  English 
'  Poetry '  for  many  years  back,  you  would  think  such  fact 
almost  surprising !  Truly  it  is  long  since  in  any  English 
Book,  Poetry  or  Prose,  I  have  felt  the  pulse  of  a  real  man's 
heart  as  I  do  in  this  same. 


40  TENNYSON  [CHAP 

"  I  know  you  cannot  read  German  :  the  more  interesting 
is  it  to  trace  in  your  '  Summer  Oak '  a  beautiful  kindred  to 
something  that  is  best  in  Goethe  ;  I  mean  his  '  Miillerinn ' 
(Miller's  daughter)  chiefly,  with  whom  the  very  Mill-dam 
gets  in  love  ;  tho'  she  proves  a  flirt  after  all  and  the  thing 
ends  in  satirical  lines  !  Very  strangely  too  in  the  '  Vision 
of  Sin '  I  am  reminded  of  niy  friend  Jean  Paul.  This  is  not 
babble,  it  is  speech  ;  true  deposition  of  a  volunteer  witness. 
And  so  I  say  let  us  all  rejoice  somewhat.  And  so  let  us  all 
smite  rhythmically,  all  in  concert,  '  the  sounding  furrows ' ; 
and  sail  forward  with  new  cheer,  'beyond  the  sunset,' 
whither  we  are  bound." 

The  allusion  at  the  end  of  his  letter  is,  of  course, 
to  Tennyson's  Ulysses,  which  Carlyle  quoted  again 
(1843)  in  Past  and  Present.  He  is  recalling  the  con- 
cluding lines  of  this  grand  monologue,  where  the  old 
warrior,  who  embodies  the  spirit  of  heroic  adventure 
in  the  primitive  world,  and  whose  manhood  has  been 
spent  in  twenty  years'  war  and  travel,  breaks  away 
from  the  monotonous  inactivity  of  life  on  a  small 
island,  and  fares  forth  again  as  a  sea-rover.  The 
Odyssey  and  the  Iliad  are  the  unsurpassed  models  of 
all  true  epical  narrative ;  the  poet  chooses  certain 
incidents  and  actions  that  bring  out  character,  that 
unite  to  frame  a  coherent  picture  of  men  and  their 
times ;  and  when  the  plot  has  been  worked  out  to  its 
denouement,  the  story  in  each  poem,  as  also  in  Milton's 
Paradise  Lost,  drops  naturally  to  a  quiet  ending;  to 
go  further  would  have  been  a  breach  of  the  poem's 
unity.  Yet  the  stamp  of  character  is  so  firmly  set 
upon  Ulysses  that  the  mind  of  man  has  never  since 
been  content  with  leaving  him  to  a  home-keeping  old 
age  in  Ithaca;  and  one  would  almost  as  soon  believe 
that  Napoleon  might  have  settled  down  placidly  in 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  41 

Elba  or  St.  Helena.  Dante  takes  up,  in  the  spirit  of 
the  age  that  produced  Marco  Polo,  the  post-Homeric 
legend  of  Ulysses  sailing  from  Circe's  island,  near 
Gaeta,  out  of  the  Mediterranean  westward  into  the 
"unpeopled  world"  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  impelled 
by  an  ardent  desire  to  explore  the  unseen  and  un- 
known.1 On  the  other  hand,  Tennyson's  hero  has 
reached  home,  and  has  given  family  life  a  fair  trial, 
but  he  finds  it  so  dull  that  he  is  soon  driven  by  sheer 
ennui  to  his  ship,  purposing  to  sail  beyond  the  sunset 
and  return  no  more.  He  exhorts  his  old  comrades,  as 
in  Dante,  to  follow  knowledge  and  make  the  most  of 
the  short  life  remaining  to  them  all.  As  a  point  of 
minor  criticism,  it  may  here  be  noticed  that  in  taking 
Ithaca  instead  of  Circe's  island  as  the  place  of  depar- 
ture on  this  final  voyage,  the  English  poet  may  have 
forgotten  that  before  the  Homeric  Ulysses  landed  in 
Ithaca,  a  solitary  man,  every  one  of  his  companions 
with  whom  he  left  Troy  had  perished  by  sea  or  land 
during  the  long  wandering.  But  fidelity  to  the  origi- 
nal tradition  is  of  no  account  in  a  poem  that  is  inde- 
pendent of  time  and  place.  Our  poet  may  have  felt 
that  he  was  touching  a  chord  in  the  heart  of  the  rest- 
less Englishman,  who  is  seldom  content  with  leisurely 
ease  after  many  years  of  working  and  wandering 
abroad  — 

1  This  legend  is  partly  confirmed,  in  a  curious  way,  by  careful 
recent  investigations  into  the  Mediterranean  geography  of  the 
Odyssey,  which  have  located,  with  much  probability,  the  island  of 
Calypso,  the  daughter  of  Atlas,  on  the  north-west  coast  of  Africa, 
near  the  Strait  of  Gibraltar.  It  is  noticed,  among  other  indications, 
that  Calypso  enjoined  Ulysses  to  keep  the  north  star  always  on  his 
left  in  sailing  back  toward  Ithaca,  and  that  he  followed  this  east- 
ward course  for  eighteen  days. 


42  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"  The  long  mechanic  pacings  to  and  fro, 
The  set  gray  life,  and  apathetic  end," 

are  not  for  men  of  this  temper.  Whether  they  are 
chiefs  of  a  petty  Greek  island,  or  citizens  of  a  vast 
empire  whose  frontiers  are  constantly  advancing,  for 
them  it  is  true  that 

' '  All  experience  is  an  arch  wherethro' 
Gleams  that  untravell'd  world,  whose  margin  fades 
For  ever  and  for  ever  when  I  move  ;  " 

and  Ulysses  is  the  primeval  type  of  the  indefatigable 
rover  for  whom  the  Juventus  Mundi  provided  un- 
limited regions  of  adventure,  but  whose  occupation 
will  soon  be  gone  when  the  uttermost  corners  of  the 
earth  shall  have  been  explored.  Ancient  myth, 
mediaeval  epic,  popular  ballads,  retain  and  hand  down 
the  figures  of  such  men,  as  they  were  stamped  on  the 
imagination  of  the  times ;  and  Tennyson's  poem  gives 
us  the  persistent  character,  blended  with  and  accorded 
to  modern  feelings. 

Ulysses  is  perhaps  the  finest,  in  purity  of  composi- 
tion and  in  the  drawing  of  character,  among  Tenny- 
son's dramatic  monologues.  Of  his  other  classical 
studies,  Tithonus  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  concep- 
tions of  the  mythologic  Greek  mind  reset  in  harmoni- 
ous verse  —  a  fable  that  may  be  interpreted  variously ; 
whether  of  the  desolate  sadness  that  would  be  the 
penalty  of  surviving,  the  mere  relic  of  a  man,  into  a 
strange  and  distant  generation  — 

"  A  white-hair'd  shadow  roaming  like  a  dream," 

or  as  a  parable  upon  the  melancholy  futility  and  dis- 
appointment that  may  follow  the  coupling  of  blooming 
youth  with  extreme  old  age. 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  43 

"  How  can  my  nature  longer  mix  with  thine  ? 
Coldly  thy  rosy  shadows  bathe  me,  cold 
Are  all  thy  lights,  and  cold  my  wrinkled  feet."  * 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  "  the  passionless  bride,  divine 
Tranquillity,"  whom  Tennyson's  Lucretius,  wrestling 
with  the  satyr,  vainly  woos  on  earth,  preferring  at 
last  to  seek  her  by  death  in  the  high  Roman  fashion, 
and  trusting  that 

"  My  golden  work  in  which  I  told  a  truth 
That  stays  the  rolling  Ixionian  wheel, 
And  numbs  the  Fury's  ringlet-snake,  and  plucks 
The  mortal  soul  from  out  immortal  hell, 
Shall  stand," 

as  assuredly  it  has  stood  and  will  endure.  In  these 
dramatic  studies  from  the  antique  the  single  Roman 
figure  is  Lucretius,  the  only  Latin  poet  who  boldly 
grappled  with  those  profound  religious  and  philosoph- 
ical enigmas  that  were  always  perplexing  Tennyson's 
meditations,  and  whose  conclusions  must  have  been  no 
less  deeply  interesting  to  him  because  they  were  so 
different  from  his  own. 

The  march  of  blank  verse,  flowing  onward  with  its 
sonorous  rhythm,  is  well  suited  to  these  monologues. 
Tennyson,  who  believed  that  "  Keats,  with  his  high 
spiritual  vision,  would  have  been,  had  he  lived, 
the  greatest  of  us  all," 2  observed  also  that  his  blank 
verse  lacked  originality  of  movement.  It  is  true  that 

1  Compare  the  Spanish  epigram  on  a  rainy  dawn  — 

"  Qnando  sale  la  Aurora 

Sale  llorada, 
Pobrecita,  que  noche 

Habra  pasada  !  " 
*  Memoir. 


44  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Keats,  who  died  before  his  metrical  skill  could  be 
perfected,  followed  evidently  the  Miltonic  construc- 
tion ;  nevertheless,  he  stands  in  the  foremost  rank,  if 
not  first,  among  the  nineteenth-century  poets  who 
may  be  said  to  have  refreshed  blank  verse  by  a  new 
exhibition  of  its  resources  for  varied  harmonies.  And 
we  may  recognise  an  affinity,  in  cadence  and  rich 
colouring,  between  the  first  part  of  Hyperion  and 
Tennyson's  compositions  in  the  same  metre,  whenever 
he  takes  for  his  theme  some  legend  of  antiquity.  We 
may  reckon,  moreover,  Keats  as  Tennyson's  forerunner 
in  the  romantic  handling  of  classic  subjects,  with  a 
fanciful  freedom  not  restrained  by  the  scholarship 
that  kept  Tennyson  closer  to  his  models,  and  made 
him  aim  at  preserving  more  closely  the  thought,  to 
the  extent  of  occasionally  reproducing  the  very  form 
and  translating  the  language,  of  the  Greek  originals.1 
Both  poets  had  the  gift  of  intense  susceptibility  to  the 
beauties  of  Nature,  and  with  both  of  them  the  primi- 
tive myths  were  coloured  by  the  magic  of  romance. 
But  Tennyson's  art  shows  more  plainly  the  influence 
of  a  time  that  delights  in  that  precision  of  details 
which  the  eighteenth-century  poetry  had  avoided,  pre- 
ferring elegant  generalities  and  elevated  sentiments 
in  polished  verse.  His  work  is  essentially  picturesque, 
in  the  sense  that  he  could  use  words  as  the  painter 
uses  his  brush  for  conveying  the  impression  of  a 
scene's  true  outline  and  colour ;  he  can  venture 
upon  accurate  description.  The  subjoined  fragment, 
written  on  revisiting  Mablethorpe,  contains  the  quin- 
tessence of  his  descriptive  style ;  the  last  three  lines 
are  sheer  landscape  painting. 

111  Far  on  the  ringing  plains  of  windy  Troy." 


ii.J  POEMS,  1830-1842  46 

"  Here  often  when  a  child  I  lay  reclined  : 

I  took  delight  in  this  fair  strand  and  free  ; 
Here  stood  the  infant  Ilion  of  the  mind, 

And  here  the  Grecian  ships  all  seem'd  to  be. 
And  here  again  I  come,  and  only  find 

The  drain-cut  level  of  the  marshy  lea, 
Gray  sand-banks,  and  pale  sunsets,  dreary  wind, 

Dim  shores,  dense  rains,  and  heavy-clouded  sea." 

So  also  in  The  Palace  of  Art  the  desolate  soul  is 
likened  to 

"  A  still  salt  pool,  lock'd  in  with  bars  of  sand  ; 

Left  on  the  shore  ;  that  hears  all  night 
The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the  land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white." 

Here  every  word  is  like  a  stroke  of  the  painter's 
brush,  put  in  to  complete  the  sketch  and  to  round  off 
the  impression ;  and  this,  as  has  been  already  observed, 
is  characteristic  of  all  Tennyson's  workmanship  ;  he 
does  not  give  the  effect  of  the  scene,  but  the  scene 
itself.  For  the  different  method  of  conveying  to  the 
mind's  eye  the  scene  through  its  effect,  we  may  com- 
pare 

"  In  such  a  night 

Stood  Dido  with  a  willow  in  her  hand 

Upon  the  wild  sea  banks,  and  waved  her  love 

To  come  again  to  Carthage." 

In  the  volumes  of  1842  one  remarkable  feature  of 
the  new  poems  is  the  diversity  of  subjects  and  motifs. 
The  second  volume  opens  with  the  Morte  d' Arthur, 
wherein  Tennyson  first  tried  his  art  upon  the  legends 
that  are  to  be  gathered  upon  the  shores  of  old  romance, 
enlarging  the  picture,  and  filling  up  his  canvas  with  a 
profusion  of  exquisite  detail,  the  sights  and  the 
sounds,  the  figures  of  the  king  and  his  knights,  the 


46  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ruined  shrine,  the  lake  in  the  full  moon,  the  clanging 
of  Sir  Bedivere's  armour,  the  ripple  of  the  water  on 
the  bank.  The  earliest  romances  had  none  of  this 
ornament;  they  relied  on  the  energetic  simplicity 
with  which  a  bard  might  relate  what  was  said  and 
done  in  some  tragic  emergency  ;  their  interest  centred 
in  the  acts  and  incidents ;  they  had  little  care  for  the 
descriptive  setting  of  their  narratives  in  landscape  or 
supplementary  decoration;  their  religion  was  miracu- 
lous and  almost  wholly  external.  Tennyson  retains 
the  dramatic  situation,  and  treats  it  in  a  manner  that 
satisfies  the  modern  sensibility  to  deeper  thoughts 
and  suggestions,  to  the  magic  of  scenery,  to  that  de- 
light in  bygone  things  which  is  the  true  romantic 
feeling  in  an  age  when  enchanted  swords  and  fairy 
queens  are  no  longer  marvellous  realities,  and  can 
only  be  preserved  for  poetic  use  as  mystic  visions. 
Arthur  and  his  knights  have  fallen  in  their  last 
battle ;  but  the  Kound  Table  was  "  an  image  of  the 
mighty  world  "  in  Avhich  the  old  order  changes,  giv- 
ing place  to  new;  they  have  lived  their  time  and 
done  their  work  ;  and  so  the  legendary  king  vanishes, 
uncertain  whither  he  may  be  going,  into  some  restful 
Elysium. 

One  feature  of  the  collection  in  this  volume  is  the 
variety  of  subject  and  character.  After  the  Morte 
d' Arthur,  the  last  scene  of  a  lost  epic,  come  two 
rustic  pastorals  of  the  present  day,  The  Gardener's 
Daughter  and  Dora;  the  latter  remarkable  for  its 
pathetic  simplicity,  without  one  superfluous  epithet 
or  streak  of  colour,  insomuch  that  Wordsworth  is 
recorded  to  have  thus  spoken  of  it  • —  "  Mr.  Tenny- 
son, I  have  been  endeavouring  all  my  life  to  write 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  47 

a  pastoral  like  your  Dora,  and  have  not  succeeded." 
And  FitzGerald  wrote  that  as  an  eclogue  it  came 
near  the  Book  of  Kuth.  Wordsworth's  pastorals, 
though  of  the  highest  quality,  are  constructed  dif- 
ferently from  Tennyson's;  he  tells  a  plain  story  or 
more  often  relates  an  incident,  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  out  some  single  note  of  human  feeling,  the 
touch  of  nature  that  makes  us  all  akin,  and  upon  this 
he  moralises  reflectively.  Next  after  Dora  follow 
three  sketches  of  quiet  strolling  through  English 
fields,  Audley  Court,  Walking  to  the  Mail,  and  Edwin 
Morris.  The  mail  comes  in  sight,  "  as  quaint  a  four- 
in-hand  as  you  shall  see  —  three  piebalds  and  a  roan." 
We  start  with  Edwin  Morris  and  his  friend  by  the 
lake,  to  hear 

"  The  soft  wind  blowing  over  meadowy  holms 
******* 

While  the  prime  swallow  dips  his  wing,  or  then 

While  the  gold-lily  blows,  and  overhead 

The  light  cloud  smoulders  on  the  summer  crag." 

All  these  poems  lap  us  in  the  caressing  air  of  rural 
England  at  its  best.  Turn  the  page,  and  before  us  is 
St.  Simeon  Stylites,  the  type  of  wild  Oriental  asceti- 
cism, praying  from  the  top  of  his  pillar  amid  rain, 
wind,  and  frost ;  "  from  scalp  to  sole  one  slough  and 
crust  of  sin," 

"  Battering  the  gates  of  heaven  with  storms  of  prayer." 

The  poet  has  leapt  back  out  of  English  fields  into  the 
Egyptian  desert.  From  this  picture  of  suicidal  misery 
and  fierce  mortification  of  the  senses  we  pass  abruptly 
to  the  idyllic  love  poem  of  the  Talking  Oak  in  an  old 


48  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

English  park ;  and  the  next  leap  is  again  still  further 
backward  into  the  primitive  world  of  Ulysses,  the 
hard-headed  fighting  man, 

"strong  in  will 
To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield." 

With  this  note  of  heroic  character  in  the  foretime 
struck  by  the  concluding  lines  of  Ulysses  we  again 
turn  over  a  leaf,  and  are  confronted  in  Locksley  Hall 
by  the  irresolute  figure  of  modern  youth,  depressed  and 
bewildered  by  his  own  inability  to  face  the  bustling 
competition  of  ordinary  English  life,  disappointed  in 
love,  denouncing  a  shallow-hearted  cousin,  and  nursing 
a  momentary  impulse  to 

"  wander  far  away, 
On  from  island  unto  island  at  the  gateways  of  the  day." 

Restlessness,  ennui,  impatience  of  humdrum  existence, 
set  him  dreaming  of  something  like  a  new  Odyssey. 
But  the  hero  of  Locksley  Hall  is  no  Ulysses ;  the 
bonds  of  culture  and  comfort  are  too  strong  for  him ; 
the  project  of  wild  adventure  is  abandoned  as  quickly 
as  it  is  formed;  he  remains  to  console  himself  with 
the  march  of  mind  and  the  wonders  of  scientific  dis- 
covery. The  contrast  of  ancient  and  modern  character 
and  circumstance  was  probably  unintentional ;  but  in 
noticing  it  we  may  take  into  account  that  while  the 
Englishman  had  been  crossed  in  love,  the  Ithacan  had 
been  remarkably  successful  with  Circe  and  Calypso, 
and  appears  to  have  been  always  well  treated  by 
women,  who  may  be  overcome,  like  the  rest  of  the 
world,  by  stalwart  perseverance.  The  great  and  last- 
ing success  of  Locksley  Hall  shows  the  power  of  genius 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  49 

in  presenting  an  ordinary  situation  poetically ;  how  it 
can  kindle  up  and  transform  common  emotions,  dealing 
boldly  with  the  facts  and  feelings  of  everyday  life. 
As  a  composition  it  has  great  original  merit :  the  even 
current  of  blank  verse  is  put  aside  for  a  swinging 
metre,  new  in  English  poetry,  with  rhymed  couplets, 
passionate  and  picturesque,  which  follow  one  another 
like  waves ;  each  of  them  running  directly  to  its 
point ;  and  the  long  nervous  lines  sustain  the  rise  and 
fall  of  varying  moods.  They  stand  now  almost  exactly 
as  they  were  written  originally,  with  one  correction 
that  greatly  improved  what  is  now  a  singularly  pow- 
erful line.1 

That  a  poem  which  is  steeped  in  the  quintessence  of 
modern  sentiment  —  an  invective  in  Rousseau's  vein 
against  a  corrupt  society  —  should  be  connected  by 
origin  with  the  early  poetry  of  the  Arabian  desert,  is 
a  notable  example  of  the  permanence  and  transmission 
of  forms.  We  know  from  the  Memoir  that  Tennyson 
took  his  idea  (he  said)  of  Locksley  Hall  from  the 
Moallakdt,  the  Suspended  poems,  composed  by  Arab 
bards  in  or  about  the  seventh  century  of  our  era,  and 
hung  up  in  the  Temple  at  Mecca.  They  are  on  differ- 
ent themes,  but  all  of  them  begin  with  what  is  called 
the  naslb,  a  melancholy  reflection  on  deserted  dwellings 
or  camping-grounds,  that  once  were  the  scene  of  love 
and  stolen  meetings.  Here  we  have  the  opening  prel- 
ude of  Locksley  Hall ;  and  in  the  first  of  the  seven 
poems  is  to  be  found  the  allusion  to  the  Pleiades  with 
its  metaphor ;  while  other  resemblances  can  be  traced 

1  "Let  the  peoplesspin  for  ever  down  the  ringing  grooves  of  change" 
(1842)  altered  to 

"  Let  the  great  world  spin  for  ever,"  etc. 


50  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  the  mother's  worldly  counsel  to  her  daughter,  and  in 
the  ending  of  both  pieces  with  a  storm..1 

One  might  almost  regard  The  Two  Voices  as  con- 
tinuing in  a  deeper  philosophic  key  the  melancholy 
musing  of  Locksley  Hall,  and  the  two  poems  might 
then  be  labelled  "Dejection."  There  is  a  similar  dis- 
consolate protest  against  the  vanity  and  emptiness  of 
life ;  there  is  the  feeling  of  doubt  and  disillusion,  the 
sombre  self-examination;  and  that  same  vague  longing 
for  the  battlefield  as  a  remedy  for  the  morbid  sensibil- 
ity that  haunts  so  many  studious  men,  which  reappears 
later  in  Maud.  And  the  poem  ends  like  In  Memoriam, 
with  a  revival  of  faith  and  hope  under  the  influences 
of  calm  natural  beauty,  of  household  affections,  and 
the  placid  ways  of  ordinary  humanity.  It  is  a  soothing 
doctrine,  and  a  wholesome  medicine  for  the  moodiness 
and  ailments,  the  weariness  of  mere  brainwork,  that 
occasionally  disturb  a  sequestered  and  uneventful 
existence;  though  it  would  hardly  minister  to  more 

1  These  parallels  have  heen  pointed  out  to  me  by  Sir  Charles 
Lyall,  to  whom  all  Arabic  poetry  is  familiar,  and  whose  own  ver- 
sion of  the  couplet  on  the  Pleiades  is  here  placed  side  by  side  with 
Tennyson's  stanza,  for  a  comparison  that  is  by  no  means  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  Arabian.  It  may  be  observed  that  the  metrical 
arrangement  of  the  original  Arabic  verse,  by  which  each  long  line 
is  composed  of  two  hemistichs,  giving  a  pause  in  the  middle,  and 
each  couplet  is  complete  in  itself,  is  not  unlike  the  movement  of 
the  English  verse,  and  may  have  suggested  it. 

Tennyson. 

"  Many  a  night  I  saw  the  Pleiades,  rising  through  the  mellow  shade, 
Glitter  like  a  swarm  of  fireflies  tangled  in  a  silver  braid." 

Imra-al-Kais . 

"  What  time  in  the  Eastern  heavens  the  Pleiades  clomb  the  sky 
Like  the  jewelled  clasps  of  a  girdle  aslant  on  a  woman's  waist." 


ii.]  POEMS,  1830-1842  51 

perilous  mental  diseases,  or  relieve  the  perplexities  of 
Hainlet.  One  stanza  in  The  Two  Voices  — 

"  '  Consider  well,'  the  voice  replied, 
'  His  face,  that  two  hours  since  hath  died  ; 
Wilt  thou  find  passion,  pain  or  pride  ? '  " 

recalls  the  masculine  attitude  of  an  age  which,  though 
inferior  in  poetic  imagination,  was  perhaps  for  that 
very  reason  less  troubled  by  thick-coming  fancies  — 

"  A  soul  supreme  in  each  hard  instance  tried, 
Above  all  pain,  all  passion,  and  all  pride, 
The  rage  of  power,  the  blast  of  public  breath, 
The  lust  of  lucre  and  the  dread  of  death."  * 

And  it  is  certainly  refreshing,  when  two  or  three  more 
pages  of  Tennyson's  volume  are  turned,  to  find  the 
spirit  of  undaunted  faith  and  courage  revived  in  the 
lofty  stanzas  of  Sir  Galahad,  where  the  rhymes  ring 
clear  like  strokes  on  a  bell  —  a  piece  of  consummate 
workmanship.  We  may  compare  the  somewhat  abject 
prostration  of  Stylites  with  the  vigorous  championship 
of  his  faith  by  the  knight-errant  — 

"  My  good  blade  carves  the  casques  of  men, 

My  tough  lance  thrusteth  sure  ; 
My  strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten, 
Because  my  heart  is  pure." 

He  stands  here  as  a  model  of  that  purity  and  trustful 
piety  which  belong  to  the  later  conceptions  of  chiv- 
alry, when  tales  of  enchantment  were  intermixed  with 
the  Christian  mysteries.  In  the  fragment  of  Lancelot 
and  Guinevere  we  have  the  tone  of  the  Renaissance, 
a  picture  of  the  courteous  knight  and  his  lady  love 
set  in  a  framework  of  brilliant  English  scenery,  as  they 
ride  through  the  woods  in  the  springtide  of  the  year, 
i  Pope's  "  Epistle  to  the  Earl  of  Oxford." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   PRINCESS    AND    IN   MEMORIAM 

FROM  1842  to  1845  the  sojourning  of  Tennyson  in 
various  parts  of  England  and  Ireland  can  be  traced 
from  his  letters,  which  mention,  however,  few  personal 
incidents,  and  allude  rarely  to  public  affairs.  One  of 
these  refers  to  a  trial  of  the  water  cure  at  Cheltenham ; 
and  in  a  letter  of  October  1844  to  F.  Tennyson, 
FitzGerald  reports  Alfred  to  be  still  there,  "where 
he  has  been  sojourning  for  two  months,  but  he  never 
writes  me  a  word.  Hydropathy  has  done  its  worst : 
he  writes  the  names  of  his  friends  in  water."  At  this 
time  he  had  been  persuaded  by  one  Dr.  Allen  to  put  all 
his  capital  into  a  project  of  turning  out  wood-carving 
by  machinery.  By  this  whimsically  rash  investment 
he  lost  his  money,  a  very  serious  blow  to  his  prospects 
of  marriage ;  and  he  fell  ill  with  anxiety  and  vexation.1 
In  1845  Mr.  Hallam  had  drawn  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
attention  to  Tennyson's  merits  and  slender  means, 
when  Peel  offered  a  small  grant  of  one  sum,  excus- 
ing his  inability  to  provide  more  at  that  time ; 
but  Hallam  treated  this  as  inadequate.  Soon  after- 

i  FitzGerald  writes  ( 1845 )  —  "  Dr.  Allen  is  dead  ;  and  A.T. ,  hav- 
ing a  life  insurance  and  policy  on  him,  will  now,  I  hope,  retrieve 
the  greater  part  of  his  fortune  again.  Apollo  certainly  did  this  ; 
shooting  one  of  his  swift  arrows  straight  at  the  heart  of  the  doctor, 
whose  perfectly  heartless  conduct  certainly  upset  A.  T.'s  iiervos." 
52 


CHAP,  in.]     THE    PRINCESS   AND   IN   MKMORIAM         53 

wards  Carlyle's  solemn  warning  to  Monckton  Milnes, 
who  had  already  been  moving  in  the  matter,  that 
his  eternal  salvation  would  depend  at  the  Day 
of  Judgment  on  his  ability  to  answer  the  question 
why  he  did  not  get  a  pension  for  Alfred  Tennyson, 
appears  to  have  been  effective,  for  in  1845  the 
annual  grant  of  £200  was  communicated  to  him  by 
Sir  Robert  Peel  as  "  a  mark  of  royal  favour  to  one 
who  had  devoted  to  worthy  objects  great  intellectual 
powers."  The  minister  was  balancing  the  claims  of 
Sheridan  Knowles,  who  was  aged  and  had  done  his 
Avork,  against  the  rising  genius,  Avhen  Milnes  sent 
to  him  Locksley  Hall  and  Ulysses ;  and  it  was  the 
reading  of  Ulysses  by  Milnes  to  Peel,  we  are  told, 
that  determined  the  recommendation,  which  was  made 
Avithout  any  kind  of  direct  or  indirect  solicitation 
from  the  poet.  He  Avrote  to  a  friend : — 

"  Something  in  that  Avord  '  pension  '  sticks  in  my  gizzard  ; 
it  is  only  the  name,  and  perhaps  would  '  smell  sweeter '  by 
some  other.  I  feel  the  least  bit  possible  Miss  Martineauish 
about  it.  You  know  she  refused  one,  saying  she  '  should  be 
robbing  the  people,  who  did  not  make  laws  for  themselves ' : 
hoAvever,  that  is  nonsense.  ...  If  the  people  did  make  laws 
for  themselves,  if  these  things  went  by  universal  suffrage, 
Avhat  literary  man  eA'er  would  get  a  lift  1  it  being  notorious 
that  the  mass  of  Englishmen  have  as  much  notion  of  poetry 
as  I  of  fox-hunting."  1 

Herein,  it  may  be  observed,  Tennyson  does  scant 
justice  to  the  taste  and  to  the  generosity  of  the  Eng- 
lish people,  who  are  at  least  as  widely  sensitive  to  fine 
poetry  as  any  other  modern  nation,  Avhich  is  probably 
one  reason  why  England  has  produced  so  much  of  it. 
Nor  has  an  original  genius,  of  strength  and  sincerity, 
1  Memoir. 


64  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ever  had  cause  to  fear  the  test  of  universal  suffrage,  if 
his  themes  have  been,  as  with  a  great  poet  they  always 
are,  of  a  kind  that  are  large  and  deep  enough  to  touch 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men :  since  no  other  art 
can  compare  with  poetry  at  the  highest  level  for  its 
power  of  winning  popularity.  And  this  is  the  more 
remarkable  when  we  remember  that  the  poet  of  mod- 
ern nations  uses  the  language  of  a  vast  miscellaneous 
multitude,  with  complex  tastes  and  in  diverse  condi- 
tions of  life ;  whereas  the  masters  of  antique  poetry 
had  for  their  audience  some  comparatively  small  com- 
munity, or  a  group  of  petty  states  and  cities  allied  to 
them  by  kinship,  in  mind  and  manners  alike,  by  whom 
the  note,  when  sounded,  was  sure  to  be  caught  up. 
And  so  they  were  fortunate  at  first  in  "  leaving  great 
verse  unto  a  little  clan,"  to  be  preserved  and  handed 
down  afterwards  as  the  inheritance  of  all  civilised 
peoples. 

It  was  part  of  Tennyson's  dubitating  temperament 
that  he  planned  out  his  foreign  travels  with  interior 
misgivings,  and  with  much  wavering  as  to  purpose 
and  direction.  FitzGerald  writes  (1845)  that  the  poet 
"  has  been  for  six  weeks  intending  to  start  every  day 
for  Switzerland  or  Cornwall,  he  does  not  know  which  " ; 
and  in  1846  we  read  again  that  he  has  been  "  for  two 
weeks  striving  to  spread  his  wings  to  Italy  or  Switzer- 
land. It  has  ended  in  his  flying  to  the  Isle  of  Wight 
for  autumn."  However,  in  August  of  that  year  he 
did  cross  the  sea  to  Ostend ;  and  his  journal  of  a  tour 
through  Belgium  and  up  the  Rhine  into  Switzerland 
gives  jotted  impressions  of  travel,  marking  his  route 
and  mainly  recording  his  discomforts.  He  was  knocked 
out  of  bed  one  morning  at  four  o'clock  to  look  at  Mont 


ni.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND   IN  MEMORIAM  65 

Blanc  without  the  cloudy  night-cap ;  "  the  glance  I  gave 
him  did  not  by  any  means  repay  me  for  the  trouble  of 
travelling  to  see  him,"  including,  we  may  suppose,  his 
disgust  at  the  "  infernal  clatter  of  innumerable  apes  " 
in  a  Swiss  hotel.  Next  year  he  was  under  hydropathic 
treatment  in  England,  so  much  occupied  with  his  poems 
that  he  suspended  correspondence  with  friends  and 
relations,  wherefore  the  personal  chronicle  of  this  time 
is  scantier  than  ever.  He  had  been  long  meditating 
upon  a  social  question  that  had  been  philosophically 
discussed  since  Rousseau's  day,  had  been  touched 
upon  by  Bentham  and  James  Mill,  but  had  never  yet 
come  within  the  sphere  "of  practical  English  politics ; 
and  the  outcome,  in  1847,  was  his  poem  of  The 
Princess. 

Here  is  a  romantic  tale,  with  the  Idea  of  a  Female 
University  for  its  theme  and  plot,  and  for  its  moral 
the  sure  triumph  of  the  natural  affections  over  any 
feminine  attempt  to  ignore  them,  or  to  work  out 
women's  independence  by  a  kind  of  revolt  from  the 
established  intellectual  dominion  of  man.  The  Prin- 
cess repudiates  a  contract  of  marriage  with  a  Prince 
to  whom  she  has  been  betrothed  in  childhood,  purpos- 
ing to  devote  herself  to  the  higher  education  of  her 
own  sex,  in  order  that  they  may  be  mentally  prepared 
to  insist  upon  liberty  and  equality.  But  the  Prince, 
with  two  comrades,  puts  on  women's  clothing;  and 
they  enter  themselves  as  students  in  a  college  that 
admits  women  only  within  its  bounds  ;  they  are  speed- 
ily detected,  as  was  obviously  inevitable;  and  the 
contrabandists  are  scornfully  expelled,  as  they  fully 
deserved  to  be.  The  Prince's  father  declares  war 
upon  the  father  of  the  Princess  to  enforce  the  mar- 


56  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

riage  contract ;  but  it  is  agreed  to  settle  the  quarrel 
by  a  combat  of  fifty  picked  warriors  on  either  side ; 
when  the  Prince  is  beaten  down  in  the  lists,  and  all 
the  College  is  turned  into  a  hospital  for  the  wounded 
men,  most  of  the  girl  graduates  being  judiciously 
ordered  home.  The  Princess  remains  to  nurse  the 
defeated  Prince  and  to  read  poetry  by  his  bedside, 
with  the  natural  consequence  that  in  tending  him  she 
is  drawn  to  love  him,  abandons  her  University,  and 
marries  her  betrothed. 

It  is  a  beautiful  serio-comic  love-story,  that  has  been 
treated  over-seriously  not  only  by  those  who  dislike 
playing  with  a  subject  which  is  for  them  a  matter  of 
hard  and  earnest  argument,  but  also  by  others  to  whom 
the  poem  is  "  the  herald  melody  of  the  higher  educa- 
tion of  women."  The  logical  conclusion  from  the 
denouement  is  that  matrimony  is  better  for  women 
than  a  life  exclusively  devoted  to  the  superintendence 
of  a  sort  of  nunnery,  in  which  girls  are  to  be  trained 
and  fitted  to  cast  off  the  yoke  of  men's  pretentious 
superiority.  oSTor  indeed  was  the  college  projected  by 
the  Princess  as  an  alternative  or  antidote  to  marriage, 
but  only  in  order  that,  if  afterwards  they  chose  to 
wed,  they  might  do  so  on  equal  terms  of  intellectual 
companionship.  A  solid  project  of  educational  reform 
is  surrounded  with  fantastic  circumstances  of  romantic 
adventure,  and  is  made  the  groundwork  of  some  very 
fine  poetry  ;  while  the  substitution  of  women  instead 
of  men  everywhere  in  the  framework  of  college  life 
and  discipline  gives  ample  room  for  artistic  sketches 
of  novel  situations  and  costumes.  The  underlying 
social  philosophy  is,  as  usual,  moderate  and  sensible : 
the  supremacy  of  Love  is  temperately  asserted;  th,e 


in.]  THE   PRINCESS   AND   IN   MEMORIAM  67 

true  value  of  the  poem  is  rightly  made  to  consist  in 
its  decorative  beauty,  in  some  delicate  delineations  of 
characters,  in  verse  of  sustained  musical  effect,  and  in 
a  few  exquisite  lyrics  that  vary  the  unrhymed  metre. 
The  tender  melancholy  of  a  feeling  that  life  may  be 
passing  without  love,  of  vague  regrets  and  longings, 
has  never  been  more  sympathetically  expressed  than 
in  the  song  of  Tears,  idle  Tears,  with  its  refrain 
of  the  days  that  are  no  more,  and  the  shadow  of 
mortal  darkness  already  falling  o,ver  the  season  of 
youth :  — 

"  Ah,  sad  and  strange  as  in  dark  summer  dawns 
The  earliest  pipe  of  half-awaken' d  birds 
To  dying  ears,  when  unto  dying  eyes 
The  casement  slowly  grows  a  glimmering  square  ; 
So  sad,  so  strange,  the  days  that  are  no  more." 

Few  know,  Tennyson  said  long  afterwards  to  his  son,1 
that  this  is  a  blank  verse  lyric ;  and  perhaps  there  is 
no  better  example  of  a  metrical  arrangement  of  words 
into  musical  passages,  divided  into  stanzas  by  the  re- 
curring cadence  of  each  final  line.  Another  song,  The 
Splendour  falls  on  Castle  Walls,  charms  the  ear,  on 
the  other  hand,  by  harmonious  assonance  and  dwelling 
on  long-drawn  rhymes.  But  Home  they  brought  their 
Warrior  Dead,  in  which  (to  quote  Charles  Kingsley) 
"  the  sight  of  the  fallen  hero's  child  opens  the  sluices 
of  the  widow's  tears,"  is  the  one  piece  that  might 
have  been  written  by  an  inferior  songster,  and  it 
has  earned  popularity  by  touching  a  somewhat  ordi- 
nary and  facile  note  of  pathos.  It  resembles  too 
nearly  an  affecting  anecdote.  The  amorous  strain 

1  Memoir. 


58  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

running  through  the  whole  poem  indicates  the  under- 
current of  natural  passion  which  is  sapping  the  whole 
edifice  of  female  independence  and  self-reliance  that 
the  Princess  has  undertaken  to  build  up  on  the  basis 
of  intellectual  emancipation ;  while  the  hard  lesson 
that  all  the  refinements  of  cultured  civilisation  are 
powerless  when  confronted  by  the  primitive  appeal  to 
force,  is  taught  by  the  eventual  dissolution  of  the 
University  amid  the  clash  of  arms.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  Princess  brought  this  catastrophe  upon 
herself  by  the  very  drastic  ordinance  which  decreed 
death  to  any  man  found  within  the  walls  of  her  college 
—  a  characteristic  sample,  though  it  may  not  have  been 
so  intended,  of  the  quick  resentment,  the  propensity 
toward  short  and  sharp  measures  with  offenders  and 
enemies,  that  may  be  observed  whenever  women  have 
risen  to  supreme  rulership  in  troubled  times.  And  the 
fact  that  all  the  illustrious  types  of  feminine  superior- 
ity cited  by  the  Princess  in  her  discourses,  or  by  the 
Lady  Ida  in  her  professorial  address  —  from  the  legen- 
dary Amazon  down  to  Joan  of  Arc — are  women  re- 
nowned in  war,  might  possibly  be  taken  as  the  poet's 
subtle  insinuation  of  female  inconsistency.  For  the 
whole  aim  and  educational  policy  of  the  College,  if  it 
was  designed  to  promote  equality  between  the  sexes, 
should  have  been  to  denounce  and  depreciate  the  pro- 
fession of  arms,  because  that  is  the  immovable  corner- 
stone of  masculine  superiority. 

The  poem  was  materially  altered  and  partly  re- 
modelled in  the  four  editions  that  followed  its  first 
issue ;  and  a  line  was  inserted  to  show,  as  the  Memoir 
tells  us,  that  Tennyson  "  certainly  did  not  mean  to 
kill  any  one  in  the  tournament " ;  though  this  casts  a 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  59 

shade  of  unreality  over  his  description  of  a  fierce  en- 
counter with  sharp  steel.  Some  passages  in  which  the 
scornful  invectives  of  the  Princess  border  too  nearly 
upon  scolding,1  are  also  judiciously  struck  out;  and 
six  of  the  songs  were  introduced  in  1850.  In  regard 
to  the  metaphors  and  illustrative  comparisons  that 
abound  throughout  the  narrative,  we  may  notice  how 
one  point  in  a  simile  brings  in  a  picture,  after  the 
Homeric  fashion  — 

"  She  read,  till  over  brow 

And  cheek  and  bosom  brake  the  wrathful  bloom 
As  of  some  fire  against  a  stormy  cloud, 
When  the  wild  peasant  rights  himself,  the  rick 
Flames,  and  his  anger  reddens  in  the  heavens." 

Here  we  have  a  reminiscence  of  rick-burning  to 
illustrate  a  hot  cheek ;  and  one  can  see  that  the 
poet's  mind  was  continually  seizing,  retaining,  and 
coining  into  words  the  impressions  of  sight  and 
hearing,  even  if  he  had  not  told  us  of  his  method. 

"  There  was  a  period  in  my  life  (he  wrote  in  a  letter)  when, 
as  an  artist,  Turner,  for  instance,  takes  rough  sketches  of 
landscape,  etc.,  in  order  to  work  them  eventually  into  some 
great  picture,  so  I  was  in  the  habit  of  chronicling,  in  four  or 
five  words  or  more,  whatever  might  strike  me  as  picturesque 
in  Nature.  I  never  put  these  down,  and  many  and  many  a 
line  has  gone  away  on  the  north  wind,  but  some  remain."  - 

He  proceeds  to  give  specimens ;  and  he  further  remarks, 
most  truly,  that  he  might  easily  have  borrowed  from 

1  "  Go  help  the  half-b rallied  dwarf,  Society, 

To  find  low  motives  unto  noble  deeds. 

******* 
"  Go,  fitter  far  for  narrower  neighbourhoods, 
Old  talker,  haunt  where  gossip  breeds  and  seethes." 

2  Memoir. 


60  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

the  energetic  language  of  the  people  expressions  and 
images  which  the  critics  would  have  credited  to  the 
effort  of  original  creative  fancy,  but  would  have  con- 
demned as  unreal  and  non-natural.  For  the  vernacular 
speech  takes  its  lights  and  shades  directly  from  things 
visible  ;  J  and  in  its  metaphors  one  can  detect  a  sur- 
vival of  the  primitive  animism,  as  in  Tennyson's 
instance  of  an  old  fishwife,  who  had  lost  two  sous  at 
sea,  crying  to  the  advancing  tide  — 

"  Ay,  roar,  do,  how  I  hates  to  see  thee  show  thy  white  teeth."  2 

When  the  popular  superstition  becomes  a  literary 
device,  it  is  quite  possible  to  abuse  the  poetic  license 
that  invests  senseless  things  with  a  kind  of  human 
passion,  as  in  Kingsley's  verse  of  "  the  cruel  crawling 
foam."  But  Tennyson  never  overcharged  his  meta- 
phors in  this  way  ;  and  it  is  certain  that  in  language 
what  is  true,  what  has  been  actually  said,  is  often 
quite  as  strong  as  what  has  been  imagined,  and  that 
no  more  powerful  words  can  be  deliberately  invented 
than  those  which  can  be  suddenly  wrung  out  of  a 
man  by  mortal  danger  or  some  violent  emotion. 

During  the  years  1846-50  Tennyson  lived  mostly  at 
Cheltenham,  making  excursions  to  Cornwall  and  to 
Scotland,  where  he  traversed  the  classic  ground  of 
Burns's  poetry.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  quote  here 
a  passage  from  the  "  Euphranor  "  of  E.  FitzGerald, 
where,  in  mentioning  Tennyson's  emotion  on  seeing 
"  the  banks  and  braes  of  bonnie  Doon,"  he  is  led  on  to 
some  striking  and  very  sympathetic  recollections  of 
his  friend. 


"  He  shall  never  darken  my  door." 
*  Memoir. 


HI.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  61 

"...  The  only  living,  and  like  to  live,  Poet  I  had  known, 
when,  so  many  years  after,  he  found  himself  beside  that 
'  bonnie  Doon,'  and — whether  it  were  from  recollection  of  poor 
Burns,  or  of  '  the  days  that  are  no  more '  which  haunt  us  all, 
I  know  not  —  I  think  he  did  not  know  —  but,  he  somehow 
'  broke,'  as  he  told  me,  '  broke  into  a  passion  of  tears.'  Of 
tears,  which  during  a  long  and  pretty  intimate  intercourse, 
I  had  never  seen  glisten  in  his  eye  but  once,  when  reading 
Virgil  — ' dear  old  Virgil,'  as  he  called  him  —  together:  and 
then  of  the  burning  of  Troy  in  the  second  ^Eneid  —  whether 
moved  by  the  catastrophe's  self,  or  the  majesty  of  the  verse 
it  is  told  in  —  or,  as  before,  scarce  knowing  why.  For,  as 
King  Arthur  shall  bear  witness,  no  young  Edwin  he,  though, 
as  a  great  Poet,  comprehending  all  the  softer  stops  of  human 
Emotion  in  that  Register  where  the  Intellectual,  no  less  than 
what  is  called  the  Poetical,  faculty  predominated.  As  all 
who  knew  him  know,  a  Man  at  all  points,  Euphranor  —  like 
young  Digby,  of  grand  proportion  and  feature,  significant  of 
that  inward  Chivalry,  becoming  his  ancient  and  honourable 
race;  when  himself  a  '  Yongd  Squire,'  like  him  in  Chaucer,  'of 
grete  strength,'  that  could  hurl  the  crowbar  further  than  any 
of  the  neighbouring  clowns,  whose  humours,  as  well  as  of  their 
betters  —  Knight,  Squire,  Landlord,  and  Land-tenant  —  he 
took  quiet  note  of,  like  Chaucer  himself." 

Another  journey  was  to  Ireland,  where  the  echoes  of 
Killarney  inspired  the  bugle  song  in  The  Princess. 
The  Memoir  tells  us  that  he  saw  much  of  Thackeray 
and  Carlyle,  among  other  notables.  He  loved  Catullus 
as  a  poet  whose  form  and  feeling,  the  sweetness 
of  his  verse  and  his  enjoyment  of  reposeful  rusticity, 
attest  an  affinity  between  two  cultured  civilisations 
that  are  separated  by  a  long  interval  of  time,  though 
the  contrast  of  morals  is  often  wide  enough.  It  was 
not  in  Thackeray's  town-bred  nature  to  rate  the  Koinan 
high ;  yet  we  find  him  writing  a  handsome  apology  for 
having  said  in  his  haste,  when  Tennyson  quoted  to 


62  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

him  Catullus,  that  he  could  do  better  himself.  Carlyle 
"  had  opened  the  gates  of  his  Valhalla  to  let  Alfred 
in,"  and  evidently  enjoyed  high  discourse  with  him. 
Between  two  such  men  there  were  necessarily  frequent 
argumentative  collisions,  their  minds  were  predisposed 
by  training  and  temperament  to  divergent  views,  and 
their  intellectual  perspective  was  by  no  means  the 
same.  Carlyle  saw  the  follies  and  iniquities  of  the 
world  through  a  lurid  magnifying  glass  ;  he  prophesied 
ruin  like  an  ancient  seer,  and  called  down  the  wrath 
of  God  upon  knaves  and  idiots ;  while  Tennyson's  in- 
clination was  toAvards  indulgence  of  human  frailty,  and 
hope  in  the  slow  betterment  of  the  world.  Violence  in 
word  or  deed  was  to  him  antipathetic ;  and  one  may 
guess  that  he  preferred  to  study  heroes  in  their  quieter 
moods,  in  some  such  fits  of  musing  as  those  which 
Shakespeare  interjects  among  scenes  of  furious  action. 
He  might  have  given  us  Cromwell  reflecting  in  a 
soliloquy  upon  the  burden  of  solitary  rulership,  sur- 
rounded by  fanatics  and  conspirators.  An  extract  from 
his  conversations  with  Mrs.  Rundle  Charles  indicates 
one  point  of  what  Tennyson  thought  about  Carlyle, 
"  You  would  like  him  for  one  day,  but  get  tired  of  him, 
so  vehement  and  destructive " ;  the  fastidious  poet 
must  have  found  in  him  too  much  sound  and  fury,  and 
may  possibly  have  doubted  whether  it  signified  any- 
thing. FitzGerald  says  in  one  of  his  letters  (1846)  — 

"  I  met  Carlyle  last  night  at  Tennyson's,  and  they  two  dis- 
cussed the  merits  of  this  world  and  the  next,  till  I  wished 
myself  out  of  this,  at  any  rate.  Carlyle  gets  more  wild, 
savage,  and  unreasonable  every  day,  and  I  do  believe  will 
turn  mad." 

Tennyson    preferred    the    Odyssey   to    the    Iliad : 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMOUIAM  63 

Carlyle,  who  liked  fierce  heroes,  and  had  no  objection 
as  a  historian  to  stern  cruelty,  though  a  little  personal 
discomfort  was  intolerable  to  him,  would  probably  have 
taken  the  other  side ;  but  on  the  subject  of  tobacco  they 
were  at  any  rate  of  one  mind,  and  on  all  questions  they 
disputed  with  amicable  vigour.  Later  ou  Carlyle,  at 
some  moment  when  he  was  more  than  usually  sour 
and  crusty,  described  the  poet  as  sitting  on  a  dunghill 
amid  innumerable  dead  dogs ;  meaning,  as  one  may 
guess,  no  more  than  impatience  with  a  man  of  rare 
intellect  who  seemed  to  him  to  sit  dreaming  on  the 
shores  of  old  romance  while  the  State  of  England  was 
rotten  with  shams  and  mouldy  with  whited  sepulchres. 
But  Carlyle  afterwards  confessed  that  "  his  own 
description  was  not  luminous  "  ;  and  though  he  cared 
little  for  verse,  yet  he  could  quote  Tears,  idle  Tears, 
felt  the  spirit  of  the  ballad  of  The  Eevenge,  was  quite 
upset  when  The  Grandmother  was  read  to  him,  and 
said  towards  his  life's  end  that  Alfred  always  from  the 
beginning  took  the  right  side  of  every  question.1  About 
the  same  time  FitzGerald  writes  of  Tennyson :  "  He  is 
the  same  magnanimous,  kindly,  delightful  fellow  as  ever ; 
uttering  by  far  the  finest  prose  sayings  of  any  one." 

It  will  be  recollected  that  Arthur  Hallarn  died  at 
Vienna  in  1833.  Some  of  the  sections  of  Tennyson's 
monumental  elegy  upon  his  friend  were  written 
very  soon  afterwards;  and  their  number  had  rapidly 
increased  by  1841,  when  Edmund  Lushington  first 
saw  the  collection  and  heard  the  poet  recite  some  of 
them.  It  must  have  been  not  far  from  completion  in 
1845,  since  in  that  year  Lushington  was  shown  the 
1  Memoir. 


64  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

stanzas  upon  his  marriage  with  Tennyson's  younger 
sister  Cecilia,  with  which  the  poem  is  now  concluded. 
Eight  editions,  all  of  them  containing  successive  addi- 
tions and  alterations,  followed  the  first  publication 
of  In  Memoriam  in  1850,  which  may  accordingly  be 
taken  as  the  outcome  of  seventeen  years'  meditative 
composition.  Of  all  Tennyson's  continuous  poems  it 
is  the  longest  and  the  most  elaborate ;  it  affected 
profoundly  the  minds  of  the  generation  among  whom 
it  appeared ;  it  embodies  the  writer's  philosophy  upon 
the  ever-present  subject  of  life  and  death,  upon  all 
the  problems  suggested  by  the  mutability  of  the 
world's  face  and  forms,  and  on  the  questions  whether 
human  mortality  may  not  fall  within  the  scope  of  the 
universal  natural  law,  whether  faith  in  things  spiritual 
is  a  true  intuition,  or  no  more  than  a  hopeful  conjecture, 
than  a  painting  of 

"  the  shadows  that  are  beneath 
The  wide  winding  caves  of  the  peopled  tomb."  * 

The  poet,  like  Bunyan's  pilgrim,  forces  his  way 
through  the  slough  of  despond,  passes  the  caverns  of 
Doubt  and  Despair,  and  emerges  finally  into  resigna- 
tion, with  trust  in  the  Unseen  Power  that  is  guiding 
all  creation  to  some  far-off  divine  event.  In  this  noble 
poem  —  on  the  whole  Tennyson's  masterpiece  —  all 
natural  things  that  catch  his  eye  or  ear  remind  him, 
by  contrast  or  sympathy,  of  his  bereavement,  and 
interpret  his  personal  emotion.  Many  of  us  know 
how  the  whole  world  seems  changed  and  discoloured 
by  some  calamitous  shock;  and  here  the  vivid  sensi- 
bility of  the  poet  reflects  and  illustrates  this  state  of 
mind  by  figures,  emblems,  and  solemn  meditations, 
i  Shelley. 


in.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND  IN   MEMORIAM  65 

He  is  impelled  by  his  own  passionate  grief  to  dwell 
upon  the  contrast  between  irremediable  human  suffer- 
ing and  the  calm  aspect  of  inanimate  Nature,  between 
the  short  and  sorrowful  days  of  man  and  the  long 
procession  of  ages.  From  the  misgivings  and  per- 
plexities, the  tendency  to  lose  heart,  engendered  by  a 
sense  of  being  environed  by  forces  that  are  blind  and 
relentless,  he  finds  his  ultimate  escape  in  the  convic- 
tion that  God  and  Nature  cannot  be  at  strife,  that 
friends  will  meet  and  know  each  other  again  here- 
after, and  that  somehow  good  will  be  the  final  goal 
of  ill.  His  sure  and  never-failing  mastery  of  poetic 
diction,  gained  by  practice  and  severe  discipline, 
carries  him  through  this  long  monotone  with  a 
high  and  even  flight;  the  four  lines  are  fitted  into 
each  stanza  without  flaws,  in  singular  harmony ; 
the  sections  are  complete  in  writing,  measure,  and 
balance. 

No  chapter  in  the  Memoir  contains  matter  of  higher 
biographical  interest  than  that  which  is  headed  "  In 
Memoriam."  A  letter  from  the  late  Henry  Sidgwick, 
whose  clear  and  intrepid  spirit  never  flinched  before 
intellectual  doubts  or  vague  forebodings,  describes  the 
impression  produced  on  him  and  on  others  of  his 
time  by  this  poem,  showing  how  it  struck  in,  so  to 
speak,  upon  their  religious  debates  at  a  moment  of 
conflicting  tendencies  and  great  uncertainty  of  direc- 
tion, giving  intensity  of  expression  to  the  dominant 
feeling  and  wider  range  to  the  prevailing  thought. 

"  The  most  important  influence  of  '  In  Memoriara '  on  my 
thought,  apart  from  its  poetic  charm  as  an  expression  of 
personal  emotion,  opened  in  a  region,  if  I  may  so  say,  deeper 
down  than  the  difference  between  Theism  and  Christianity  : 


66  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

it  lay  in  the  unparalleled  combination  of  intensity  of  feeling 
with  comprehensiveness  of  view  and  balance  of  judgment, 
shown  in  presenting  the  deepest  needs  and  perplexities  of 
humanity.  And  this  influence,  I  find,  has  increased  rather 
than  diminished  as  years  have  gone  on,  and  as  the  great  issues 
between  Agnostic  Science  and  Faith  have  become  continually 
more  prominent.  In  the  sixties  I  should  say  that  these  deeper 
issues  were  somewhat  obscured  by  the  discussions  on  Christian 
dogma,  and  Inspiration  of  Scripture,  etc.  .  .  .  During  these 
years  we  were  absorbed  in  struggling  for  freedom  of  thought 
in  the  trammels  of  a  historical  religion  ;  and  perhaps  what  we 
sympathized  with  most  in  '  In  Memoriam '  at  this  time,  apart 
from  the  personal  feeling,  was  the  defence  of  'honest  doubt,' 
the  reconciliation  of  knowledge  and  faith  in  the  introductory 
poem,  and  the  hopeful  trumpet-ring  of  the  lines  on  the  New 
Year.  .  .  .  Well,  the  years  pass,  the  struggle  with  what 
Carlyle  used  to  call  '  Hebrew  old  clothes  '  is  over,  Freedom  is 
won,  and  what  does  Freedom  bring  us  to  ?  It  brings  us  face 
to  face  with  atheistic  science ;  the  faith  in  God  and  Immor- 
tality, which  we  had  been  struggling  to  clear  from  superstition, 
suddenly  seems  to  be  in  the  air ;  and  in  seeking  for  a  firm 
basis  for  this  faith  we  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  the  '  fight 
with  death  '  which  '  In  Memoriam  '  so  powerfully  presents." 

The  whole  letter,  which  is  too  long  for  quotation 
here,  may  be  read  in  the  Memoir  as  a  fair  representa- 
tion of  the  effect  produced  by  In  Memoriam  iipon 
men  of  sincere  and  sensitive  minds,  who  resolutely 
confronted  the  inexorable  facts  of  human  existence, 
yet  were  not  content  to  treat  the  problems  as  in- 
soluble. And  so  the  wide  impression  that  was  made 
by  these  exquisitely  musical  meditations  may  be 
ascribed  to  their  sympathetic  affinity  with  the 
peculiar  spiritual  aspirations  and  intellectual  dilem- 
mas of  the  time.  Dogmatic  theology,  notwithstanding 
the  famous  rallying  movement  at  Oxford,  had  long 
been  losing  ground ;  liturgies  and  positive  articles  of 


in.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND   IN  MEMORIAM  67 

religion  were  out  of  credit ;  the  proofs  of  Christianity 
by  rational  evidence  brought  religion  upon  the  un- 
favourable ground  of  appeal  to  history  and  to  questions 
of  fact.  Among  average  Englishmen  a  large  number 
were  willing  to  take  morality  as  the  chief  test  of 
religious  truth,  were  disposed  to  hold  that  its  essen- 
tial principles  were  best  stated  in  the  language  of  ethics. 
The  Utilitarian  philosophers  undertook  to  provide 
ethics  with  an  experimental  basis ;  and  the  researches 
of  physical  science  threw  doubt  upon  the  actuality  of 
divine  intervention  in  the  course,  or  even  the  constitu- 
tion, of  the  world ;  they  pointed  to  a  system  that  was 
mechanical,  though  not  necessarily  materialistic.  Then 
came,  with  a  reaction,  the  energetic  protests  of  those 
who  saw  and  felt  that  Religion,  which  is  to  the  vast 
majority  of  mankind  a  spiritual  necessity,  must  not 
stand  or  fall  by  documentary  evidence,  must  be  placed 
in  some  region  that  is  inaccessible  to  arguments  from 
mere  utility,  that  is  independent  of  and  untouched  by 
the  observation  of  phenomena  or  the  computation  of 
probabilities.  Some  endeavoured  to  show  that  the 
conclusions  of  Science  could  be  reconciled  with  the 
orthodox  traditions  ;  others,  as  Newman,  declared  that 
there  was  no  conflict  at  all,  that  theology  is  the  high- 
est science,  entirely  above  and  unaffected  by  what 
used  to  be  called  natural  philosophy ;  but  Tennyson 
saw  that  a  serious  conflict,  a  revolution  of  ideas,  was 
inevitable.  All  speculation,  physical  or  metaphysical, 
is  necessarily  affected  by  what  we  know  of  the  world 
we  live  in ;  and  the  unrolling  of  the  record  of  an 
immeasurable  past  compels  us  to  look  with  new  feel- 
ings on  all  that  goes  on  around  us.  If  we  compare 
Tennyson  with  Wordsworth,  we  are  at  once  aware 


68  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

of  a  marked  difference  in  their  treatment  of  Nature. 
Wordsworth  dwells  mainly  upon  her  calm,  majestic, 
and  kindly  aspect ;  she  is  the  homely  nurse  who  en- 
deavours to  content  the  immortal  soul  of  imperial 
man  with  his  humble  abode  on  earth ;  she  is  beautiful 
and  beneficent;  she  "lifts  the  spirit  to  a  calmer 
height " ;  and  although  Wordsworth  may  be  occasion- 
ally touched  by  her  insensibility  to  human  sorrow, 
may  be  perplexed  by  finding  her  ways  unintelligible, 
yet  he  discerns  everywhere  the  interfusion  of  a 
divine  spirit,  the  evidences  of  admirable  arrange- 
ment and  design.  For  Tennyson  also  the  external 
world  was  sublime  and  beautiful,  soothing  his  re- 
grets and  suggesting  resignation  to  the  common  lot; 
but  the  illimitable  expansion  of  time  and  space  laid 
open  by  scientific  discoveries,  the  record  of  waste 
and  prodigality  through  countless  ages,  the  disclos- 
ure of  the  processes  of  Nature,  her  impassive  uni- 
formity, her  implacable  regularity,  took  strong  hold 
of  an  imaginative  mind  that  was  in  communion 
with  the  thought  and  knowledge  of  the  day.  After 
Tennyson's  death  Huxley  wrote  that  he  was  the 
only  modern  poet,  perhaps  the  only  poet  since  Lucre- 
tius, who  had  taken  the  trouble  to  understand  the 
work  and  methods  of  men  of  science;  though  one 
may  remark  that  the  two  poets  found  their  consola- 
tion in  very  different  conclusions.  It  now  seemed  to 
him  that  the  scientific  men  were  laying  claims  to  a 
dominion  which  might  "place  in  jeopardy  not  merely 
the  formal  outworks  but  the  central  dogma  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  is  a  belief  in  a  future  life,  in  the  soul's 
conscious  immortality.  Is  man  subject  to  the  general 
law  of  unending  mutability,  and  is  he  after  all  but 


in.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND   IN  MEMORIAM  69 

the  highest  and  latest  type,  to  be  made  and  broken 
like  a  million  others,  mere  clay  in  the  moulding  hands 
that  are  darkly  seen  in  the  evolution  of  worlds  ?  The 
poet  transfigured  these  obstinate  questionings  into  the 
vision  of 

"an  ever-breaking  shore 
That  tumbled  in  the  Godless  deep." 

He  asks :  Shall  man 

"Who  loved,  who  suffer'd  countless  ilia, 
Who  battled  for  the  True,  the  Just, 
Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust, 
Or  seal'd  within  the  iron  hills  ?  " 

and  he  was  haunted  by  the  misgiving  that  man  also 
might  be  no  more  than  other  atoms  in  the  ever-chang- 
ing universe,  that  prayer  is  fruitless,  that  death  may 
be  stronger  than  love,  and  that  Nature  gives  no  inti- 
mations of  conscious  survival.  Nevertheless  her  face, 
as  he  sees  it,  is  so  fair  that  it  brings  him  consolation. 
The  alternations  of  the  seasons,  the  storm  and  the 
sunshine,  are  reflected  in  his  varying  moods ;  the 
spring  breezes  carry  a  cheerful  message,  the  autumnal 
gales  accord  with  the  unrest  of  his  mind ;  a  quiet  sea 
turns  his  thoughts  to  the  calm  of  death.  He  feels  the 
immemorial  touch  of  sadness  in  the  brief  lifetime  of 
flower  and  foliage,  in  the  passing  of  the  long  light 
summer  days ;  yet  beyond  all  these  transitory  images 
he  looks  forward  to  the  twilight  of  eternal  day  on  the 
low,  dark  verge  of  human  existence,  where  the  mys- 
teries of  pain  and  sorrow  will  be  understood,  and  no 
more  shadows  will  fall  on  the  landscape  of  the  past. 
After  long  striving  with  doubts  and  fears,  after  having 


70  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"fought  with  death,"  he  resolves  that  we  cannot  be 
"  wholly  brain,  magnetic  mockeries  "  — 

'  Not  only  cunning  casts  in  clay  : 

Let  Science  prove  we  are,  and  then 
What  matters  Science  unto  men, 
At  least  to  me  ?     I  would  not  stay." 

After  this  manner  Tennyson  made  his  stand  against 
the  encroachments  of  Science  upon  the  spiritual  do- 
main ;  though  he  refused  to  retreat,  like  some  others, 
behind  dogmatic  entrenchments,  and  trod  under  foot 
the  terrors  of  Acheron.  By  tight-lacing  creeds,  to  use 
Carlyle's  phrase,  he  would  not  be  bound ;  he  believed 
firmly  in  some  indissoluble  relation  between  human 
destinies  and  a  divine  providence ;  he  reckoned  the 
strenuous  instinct  and  universal  anticipation  of  some 
future  life  to  be  presumptive  evidence  of  a  truth ;  and 
he  was  confident  that  friends  would  meet  and  know 
each  other  hereafter.  A  poem  which  is  a  long  epitaph 
must  naturally  touch  in  this  consolatory  strain  upon 
the  visitations  of  sorrow  and  death ;  but  it  must  also 
remind  us  of  the  limitations,  the  inconclusiveness, 
that  are  inseparable  from  the  emotional  treatment  of 
enigmas  that  foil  the  deepest  philosophies.  And  since 
not  every  one  can  be  satisfied  with  subjective  faith 
or  lofty  intuitions,  it  may  be  that  the  note  of  alarm 
and  despondency  sounded  by  In  Mernoriam  startled 
more  minds  than  were  reassured  by  the  poet's  final 
conviction  that  all  is  well 

' '  tho'  faith  and  form 
Be  sunder 'd  in  the  night  of  fear." 

If,  therefore,  the  poem  strengthened  in  many  the 
determination  to  go  onward  trustfully,  on  the  other 
hand  there  was  an  attitude  of  terror  in  the  recoil  from 


in.]  THE    PRINCESS   AND    IN   MEMOUIAM  71 

materialistic  paths  that  lead  to  an  abyss ;  and  perhaps 
it  may  be  so  far  counted  among  the  influences  which 
have  combined  to  promote  a  retreat  in  the  latter  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century  toward  the  shelter  of  dog- 
matic beliefs  and  an  infallible  authority  in  matters 
of  religion.  But  whatever  may  have  been  the  intel- 
lectual influences  of  In  Menioriam,  we  may  agree  that 
it  enlarged  the  range  of  poetry  by  entering  sympa- 
thetically upon  the  field  of  these  fresh  doubts  and 
difficulties,  and  by  showing  how  a  mind  that  in  grief 
turns  naturally  to  religion  may  become  absorbed  in 
intellectual  problems.  Wordsworth  found  content  in 
the  contemplation  of  Nature;  Science  he  despised, 
and  such  questions  as  whether  God  and  Nature  are 
at  strife  did  not  trouble  his  serene  philosophy. 
Tennyson's  meditations  were  turned  toward  the  enig- 
mas of  life  by  the  stroke  of  grief ;  and  he  was  thus 
led,  rightly,  to  fulfil  the  poet's  mission,  which  is  to 
embody  the  floating  thought  of  his  period.  In  those 
very  popular  lines 

"There  lives  more  faith  in  honest  doubt, 
Believe  rne,  than  in  half  the  creeds," 

we  have  an  antithesis,  a  kind  of  paradox,  that  concisely 
represents  the  prevailing  state  of  many  minds  to  whom 
scientific  explorations  brought  increasing  religious  per- 
plexity, until  they  obtained  repose  in  the  conclusion 
that  essential  truths  lie  somewhere  beyond  and  are 
independent  of  all  positive  doctrines  and  formulas. 
"  Our  little  systems  have  their  day  "  ;  we  may  believe 
where  we  cannot  verify,  and  Knowledge  must  have  her 
place  as  the  younger  child  of  Wisdom.  The  poet  leads 
us  to  a  cloudy  height ;  and  though  it  is  not  his  business 


72  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  satisfy  the  strict  philosophical  enquirer,  he  offers  to 
all  wandering  souls  a  refuge  in  the  faith 

"that  comes  of  self-control, 
The  truths  that  never  can  be  proved 
Until  we  close  with  all  we  loved 
And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 

We  know  from  the  Memoir  that  Tennyson  believed 
himself  to  be  the  originator  of  the  metre  of  In 
Memoriam,  until  after  its  appearance  he  was  told  that 
it  might  be  found  in  Elizabethan  poetry  and  else- 
where.1 Of  the  two  specimens  in  Ben  Jonson,  one  of 
them,  the  elegy  Underwood,  has  a  certain  resemblance 
in  movement  and  tone  with  Tennyson's  shorter  pieces 
in  the  same  metre,  probably  because  in  this  form  the 
stanza  carries  naturally  a  certain  dignity  and  sobriety 
of  feeling,  and  is  well  suited  by  its  measured  regularity 
for  compact  and  sententious  expression.  The  inter- 
position of  a  couplet  with  a  rhyme  of  its  own  between 
the  first  and  fourth  line,  stays  the  pace  of  the  verse. 
Yet  the  high  pathetic  vibrations  of  feeling  in  the  finest 
passages  of  In  Memoriam  prove  that  in  Tennyson's 
hands  the  instrument  had  acquired  a  wider  range ; 
while  the  main  current  of  his  meditations  passes 
through  so  many  varieties  of  impressions  or  aspects  of 
nature,  the  dim  rainy  morning,  the  short  midsummer 
night,  the  bitter  wintry  day,  with  moods  corresponding 
to  these  influences,  that  few  will  agree  with  FitzGerald's 
objection  to  the  poem  as  monotonous. 

In  a  little  volume  published  in  1866  under  the  title 
of  Tennysonia,  the  writer,  who  is  an  ardent  admirer  of 

1  A  complete  list  of  the  writers  who  had  used  the  metre  is  given 
in  the  commentary  on  "  In  Memoriam  "  by  Professor  A.  C.  Bradley 
(1901). 


in.]  THE   PEINCESS   AND   IN   MEMORIAM  73 

the  poet,  has  been  at  the  pains  of  pointing  out,  by 
parallel  quotations,  certain  coincidences  of  thought 
and  phrase  between  In  Memoriam  and  Shakespeare's 
sonnets.  Something  of  the  kind  is  here  and  there 
faintly  traceable,  and  the  "ruined  woodlands"  in 
Maud  might  remind  us  of  Shakespeare's  likening  the 
leafless  trees  to  "bare  ruined  choirs,  where  once  the 
sweet  birds  sang."  But  in  Shakespeare  himself,  as  in 
all  other  poets,  similar  reminiscences  of  this  kind  may 
be  discovered,  nor  could  they  ever  be  rightly  made  an 
imputation  against  any  great  writer.  FitzGerald  gives 
the  sound  ruling  on  this  subject  in  one  of  his  letters  — 
"  I  never  speak  of  Plagiarism  unless  the  Coincidence, 
or  Adoption,  be  something  quite  superior  to  the  general 
Material  of  him  in  whom  the  'parallel  passage'  is 
found.  And  Shakespeare  may  have  read  the  other  old 
boy  [Tusser]  and  remembered  unconsciously,  or  never 
have  read,  and  never  remembered."  The  comparison 
in  Tennysonia  proves  at  most,  and  apparently  aims  at 
no  more  than  proving,  an  inference  that  Tennyson's 
memory  had  assimilated  the  sonnets.  And  it  is  only 
of  real  interest  when  it  shows  occasionally  how  the 
ideas  and  impressions,  which  are  as  much  the  common 
property  of  all  ages  as  the  natural  phenomena  and 
human  sensitiveness  that  produce  them,  are  set  in  new 
frames  by  the  chief  artists  of  each  succeeding  time ; 
how,  to  quote  Tennyson,  the  thoughts  of  man  are 
widened  by  the  circling  of  the  suns.  The  incessant 
battle  between  sea  and  shore  reminds  Shakespeare  that 
the  solid  earth,  and  all  that  it  contains,  are  shifting 
and  transitory ;  while  Tennyson's  reflection  upon  the 
changes  of  land  and  water  takes  the  vast  scale  of 
geologic  periods  — 


74  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"  There  rolls  the  deep  where  grew  the  tree. 
O  earth,  what  changes  hast  thou  seen  ! 
There  where  the  long  street  roars,  hath  been 
The  stillness  of  the  central  sea." 

The  sonnets  and  In  Memoriam  have  both  for  their 
subject  the  passionate  attachment  to  a  friend,  living  or 
dead ;  and  each  poet  turns  frequently  to  Nature  for  an 
image  of  his  emotion  or  a  response  to  it.  It  may 
be  noticed,  as  a  point  of  style,  that  whereas  Shake- 
speare strikes  off  his  image  and  fits  it  to  his  thought, 
in  two  or  four  lines,1  the  modern  artist  draws  out  a 
whole  landscape,  or  accumulates  picturesque  touches  — 

' '  I  find  no  place  that  does  not  breathe 
Some  gracious  memory  of  my  friend  ; 

"No  gray  old  grange,  or  lonely  fold, 
Or  low  morass  and  whispering  reed, 
Or  simple  stile  from  mead  to  mead, 
Or  sheepwalk  up  the  windy  wold ' '  — 

prolonging  the  description  through  several  stanzas. 
Both  poets  are  profoundly  impressed  by  Nature's 
warning  to  man  that  all  her  works  are  perishable ;  but 
while  Tennyson  is  alarmed  by  the  sense  of  mortality, 
yet  finds  hope  in  some  future  state  beyond,  Shake- 
speare, with  his  "  indolent  and  kingly  gaze  "  at  human 
fears  and  follies,  propounds  no  reassuring  speculation. 
Hamlet's  last  words  are  that  the  rest  is  silence. 

In  1836,  when  Charles  Tennyson  married  Louisa 
Sellwood,  her  sister  Emily  had  been  one  of  the 
bridesmaids.  To  her  Alfred  Tennyson  became  soon 
afterwards  engaged;  but  in  1840  the  prospect  of 

1  "  Like  as  the  waves  make  toward  the  pebbled  shore, 
So  do  our  minutes  hasten  to  their  end." 

—  Sonnet  LX. 


in.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND  IN  MEMORIAM  75 

marriage  appeared  so  remote  that  correspondence 
between  them  was  broken  off,  and  ten  years  passed 
before  the  engagement  was  renewed.  The  wedding 
took  place  at  last  in  June  1850,  at  Shiplake  Church 
on  the  Thames,  when  the  two  became  partners  upon 
a  very  slender  capital,  including  the  expectation  of  a 
royalty  on  the  published  poems.  They  made  a  jour- 
ney into  western  England,  visiting  Glastonbury  and 
Arthur  Hallam's  grave  at  Clevedon.  A  very  generous 
offer  from  Mr.  Monckton  Milnes  of  permanent  quarters 
in  a  wing  of  his  house  at  Fryston  they  would  not 
accept;  they  took  a  house  at  Warninglid  in  Sussex, 
but  the  first  storm  blew  a  hole  through  the  wall,  and 
they  departed  hastily,  to  find  at  last  a  fixed  habitation 
at  Chapel  House,  Twickenham.  Their  first  child  was 
born,  but  died  at  birth,  in  April  1851,  after  which 
they  travelled  into  Italy,  meeting  the  Brownings  at 
Paris  as  they  returned  homeward.  Under  the  title 
of  "The  Daisy,"  Tennyson  has  commemorated  this 
journey  in  stanzas  of  consummate  metrical  harmony, 
with  their  beautiful  anapaestic  ripple  in  each  final 
line,  to  be  studied  by  all  who  would  understand  the 
quantitative  value  (not  merely  accentual)  of  English 
syllables  in  rhythmic  compositions  — 

"But  ere  we  reach'd  the  highest  summit 
I  pluck'd  a  daisy,  I  gave  it  you. 

"  It  told  of  England  then  to  me, 
And  now  it  tells  of  Italy. 

0  love,  we  two  shall  go  no  longer 
To  lands  of  summer  across  the  sea." 

Tennyson  had  at  this  time  become   the   foremost 
poet  of  his  day.     His  genius  had  been  saluted  by  the 


76  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

applause  and  admiration  of  his  contemporaries,  and 
was  now  under  the  glow  of  its  meridian.  In  a  con- 
tribution to  the  Life  of  William  Morris?  Canon  Dixon, 
writing  of  Oxford  in  1851-53,  says  :  — 

"It  is  difficult  to  the  present  generation  to  understand 
the  Tennysonian  enthusiasm  which  then  prevailed  both  in 
Oxford  and  in  the  world.  All  reading  men  were  Tenny- 
sonians  ;  all  sets  of  reading  men  talked  poetry.  Poetry  was 
the  thing ;  and  it  was  felt  with  justice  that  this  was  due  to 
Tennyson.  He  had  invented  a  new  poetry,  a  new  poetic 
English  ;  his  use  of  words  was  new,  and  every  piece  that  he 
wrote  was  a  conquest  of  a  new  region.  This  lasted  till  Maud, 
in  1855,  which  was  his  last  poem  that  mattered." 

This  quotation,  though  one  may  demur  to  the  final 
words,  shows  Tennyson's  position  and  the  attraction 
of  his  poetry  for  the  younger  men;  and  his  general 
eminence  had  already  been  marked  for  public  recogni- 
tion. In  November  1850,  after  Wordsworth's  death, 
the  Laureateship  was  offered  to  Tennyson.  Lord  John 
K-ussell  submitted  to  the  Queen  the  four  names  of 
Leigh  Hunt,  Sheridan  Knowles,  Henry  Taylor,  and, 
last  on  the  list,  Tennyson.  The  Prince  Consort's 
admiration  of  In  Memoriam  determined  Her  Majesty's 
choice,  which  might  seem  easy  enough  to  the  verdict 
of  the  present  day.  The  subjoined  extract  from  the 
Queen's  Secretary  is  worth  quoting,  to  show  that  the 
Laureate's  duties  were  not  intended  to  be  burdensome, 
and  that  the  offer  was  made,  as  the  letter  ended  by 
saying,  as  a  mark  of  Her  Majesty's  appreciation  of 
literary  distinction  — 

"  The  ancient  duties  of  this  Office,  which  consisted  in  laud- 
atory Odes  to  the  Sovereign,  have  been  long,  as  you  are 
probably  aware,  in  abeyance,  and  have  never  been  called  for 

iByJ.  W.  Mackail  (1899). 


in.]  THE   PRINCESS   AND    IN   MEMOUIAM  77 

during  the  Reign  of  Her  present  Majesty.  The  Queen  how- 
ever has  been  anxious  that  the  Office  should  be  maintained ; 
first  on  account  of  its  antiquity,  and  secondly  because  it 
establishes  a  connection,  through  Her  Household,  between 
Her  Majesty  and  the  poets  of  this  country  as  a  body." 1 

To  refuse  Wordsworth's  succession,  proposed  to  him 
on  such  honourable  terms,  would  have  been  difficult ; 
nevertheless  Tennyson  hesitated  until  his  acceptance 
was  determined  by  the  right  judgment  of  his  friends. 
His  accession  to  office  brought  down  upon  him,  among 
other  honoraria,  "such  shoals  of  poems  that  I  am 
almost  crazed  with  them  ;  the  two  hundred  million 
poets  of  Great  Britain  deluge  me  daily.  Truly,  the 
Laureateship  is  no  sinecure.  "  For  the  inevitable 
levee  he  was  accommodated,  not  without  disquietude 
over  the  nether  garment,  with  the  loan  of  a  Court  suit 
from  his  ancient  brother  in  song,  Samuel  Rogers,  who 
had  declined  the  laurels  on  the  plea  of  age. 

In  1852  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  death  was  the 
theme  of  the  first  verses  published  by  the  Laureate  in 
discharge  of  his  functions.  It  is  remarkable,  and  to 
some  it  may  be  a  consoling  example  of  the  necessary 
superficiality  of  day-by-day  criticism,  that  we  find 
Tennyson,  in  a  letter  thanking  Henry  Taylor  for  a 
just  and  discerning  eulogium,  writing  that  he  is  doubly 
grateful  for  it  in  the  all  but  universal  depreciation  of 
his  poem  by  the  Press.  Yet  it  is  probably  the  best 
poem  on  a  national  event  that  has  ever  been  struck  off 
by  a  Laureate  under  the  sudden  impatient  spur  of  the 
moment;  remembering  that  for  a  poet  of  established 
reputation  this  kind  of  improvisation  is  a  serious  ordeal. 
Southey  could  only  deplore  George  the  Third's  death 
1  Memoir.  2  Ibid. 


78  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  hexameters  that  were  incontestably  deplorable ;  and 
Wordsworth,  as  Laureate,  attempted  nothing  of  the 
sort.  From  this  point  of  view  Tennyson's  success  in 
the  Wellington  Ode,  which  is  well  sustained  at  a  high 
level  of  solemn  harmony,  may  be  reckoned  unique; 
though  the  original  version,  which  must  have  been 
rapidly  composed,  was  amended  and  strengthened  in 
three  subsequent  editions.  The  intermediate  changes 
were  not  invariably  for  the  better.  Of  the  two  lines  — 

"  Where  shall  we  lay  the  man  whom  we  deplore  ? 
He  died  on  Walmer's  lonely  shore  "  — 

the  second  line,  which  is  perhaps  the  weakest  that 
Tennyson  ever  published,  was  inserted  in  1853,  and 
most  deservedly  ejected  in  the  following  year.  In  the 
couplet  — 

"  Mourn,  for  to  us  he  seems  the  last, 
Remembering  all  his  greatness  in  the  past," 

one  misses  with  regret  the  original  second  line  — 
"  Our  sorrow  draws  but  on  the  golden  past," 

which  is  stronger  in  sound  and  feeling,  and  must  have 
been  changed  for  the  prosaic  reason  that  sorrow  for 
the  dead  can  never  draw  on  the  present.  The  keynote 
of  heroic  character  is  finely  given  in  the  lines  — 

"  Not  once  or  twice  in  our  rough  island-story 
The  path  of  duty  was  the  way  to  glory." 

They  are  repeated  as  the  burden  or  lofty  moral  of  the 
poem,  and  have  taken  rank  among  the  quotations  from 
English  poetry  that  are  familiar  in  our  mouths  as 
household  words. 


in.]          THE   PRINCESS  AND   IN   MEMORIAM  79 

The  true  successors  of  the  earlier  bards,  who  cele- 
brated in  chansons  de  geste  and  in  ballads  the  deeds 
and  death  of  great  men  or  some  famous  national  ex- 
ploit, have  been,  in  quite  modern  times,  poets  who, 
like  Campbell,  Cowper,  and  the  author  of  The  Burial 
of  Sir  John  Moore,  spontaneously  and  unofficially,  by 
some  happy  stroke  of  genius,  seized  upon  some  stirring 
incident  of  the  time,  and  struck  powerfully  the  right 
popular  note.  That  this  has  now  become  generally 
assumed  to  be  the  vocation  of  the  ideal  Laureate, 
rather  than  the  production  of  courtly  verse,  may  be 
fairly  attributed  in  a  large  degree  to  Tennyson,  who 
evidently  so  understood  his  office,  for  he  began  thence- 
forward to  write  poems  upon  heroic  exploits,  or  the 
incidents  of  national  war.  In  this  spirit  he  composed 
The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,  a  fine  rolling 
war-chant,  with  a  thunderous  echo  in  the  dominant 
rhyme,  which  gained  hearty  applause  from  the  British 
soldiers  in  the  Crimea,  particularly  for  the  well-known 
line  —  "  Some  one  had  blundered  "  —  that  was  omitted 
in  the  revised  version  of  1855.  In  the  Defence  of 
Lucknow,  an  incident  that  is  famous  in  the  annals  of 
the  Indian  Mutiny,  there  are  passages  full  of  vigour  and 
animation,  but  on  the  whole  too  much  vehemence 
and  tumultuous  activity ;  the  poet  endeavours  to  startle 
and  strike  the  imagination  by  glowing  pictures  of  the 
realities  of  a  siege ;  he  accumulates  authentic  details, 
he  tries  to  give  us  the  scenes  and  events  with  the 
roar  of  battle,  the  terror  and  the  misery,  the  furious 
assaults  and  the  desperate  defence,  as  on  the  stage 
of  a  theatre  :  — 

"  Then  on  another  wild  morning  another  wild  earthquake  out- 
tore 


80  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Clean  from  our  lines  of  defence  ten  or  twelve  good  paces 

or  more. 
Kifleman,  high  on  the  roof,  hidden  there  from  the  light  of 

the  sun  — 
One  has  leapt  up  on  the  breach,  crying  out  :  'Follow  me, 

follow  me  ! '  — 
Mark  him  —  he  falls  !  then  another,  and  him  too,  and  down 

goes  he. 
Had  they  been  bold  enough  then,   who  can  tell  but  the 

traitors  had  won  ? 
Boardings  and  rafters  and  doors  —  an  embrasure  !  make  way 

for  the  gun  ! 
Now  double-charge  it  with  grape  !     It  is  charged  and  we 

fire,  and  they  run." 

Here  is  abundance  of  fiery  animation,  but  also  too 
many  descriptive  particulars ;  and  as  the  whole  poem 
is  composed  in  this  manner,  it  resembles  a  vivid  nar- 
ration of  events  in  pictorial  prose.  Such  work  hardly 
lies  within  the  compass  of  the  poetic  artist,  whose 
business  it  is  to  simplify  and  concentrate  the  general 
impression;  and  though  the  Defence  of  Lucknow 
is  full  of  energy  and  ardour,  one  must  pass  upon  it 
the  criticism  that  the  canvas  is  overcrowded  and  the 
verse  too  hurried  and  vehement  for  the  ballad,  or  for 
the  lyric  of  heroism,  which  is  best  when  it  gives  a 
single  tragic  situation  in  clear  outline. 

In  the  poetry  of  action  Tennyson  made  his  high- 
est score  by  The  Revenge :  A  Ballad  of  the  Fleet ; 
although  even  this  spirited  poem,  with  its  note  of 
stately  and  unconquerable  valour,  hardly  attains  the 
impressive  simplicity  of  the  true  ballad ;  it  is  still  too 
circumstantial.  We  have  here  a  splendidly  versified 
narrative  of  a  sea-fight,  with  all  the  atmosphere  of 
the  winds  and  the  waves :  it  is  a  noble  chanson  de 


ni.]          THE  PRINCESS  AND   IN   MEMORIAM  81 

geste,  and  the  poem  ends  with  the  closing  of  the  waters 
over  the  ship :  — 

"  When  a  wind  from  the  lands  they  had  ruin'd  awoke  from 

sleep, 

And  the  water  began  to  heave  and  the  weather  to  moan, 
And  or  ever  that  evening  ended  a  great  gale  blew, 
And  a  wave  like  the  wave  that  is  raised  by  an  earthquake 

grew, 
Till  it  smote  on  their  hulls  and  their  sails  and  their  masts 

and  their  flags, 
And  the  whole  sea  plunged  and  fell  on  the  shot-shatter' d 

navy  of  Spain, 

And  the  little  Revenge  herself  went  down  by  the  island  crags 
To  be  lost  evermore  in  the  main." 

The  distance  of  time  lends  its  enchantment  to  this 
story,  and  three  centuries  gave  Tennyson  the  right 
prospective ;  he  could  throw  into  strong  relief  the 
situation  with  its  central  figure,  he  could  omit  partic- 
ulars because  they  were  unknown ;  he  followed  per- 
force the  natural  instinct  of  popular  tradition  which 
preserves  the  broad  lines  of  heroic  character  and 
achievement,  leaving  the  rest  to  oblivion.  Nothing  is 
more  rare  in  modern  poetry  than  success  in  heroic 
verse  —  in  the  art  of  rendering  with  strength,  beauty, 
and  dignity  the  acts  and  emotions  of  men  at  moments 
which  string  up  their  energies  to  the  highest  pitch, 
and  bring  into  full  play  the  qualities  of  inflexible 
courage  and  endurance.  To  write  of  battles  long  ago 
is  always  hard  enough,  but  in  such  cases  romantic 
colouring  is  admissible,  and  the  lapse  of  many  years 
has  luckily  rubbed  out  all  but  the  salient  features  of  a 
great  event  or  a  daring  exploit.  When  these  subjects 
belong  to  contemporary  history,  to  the  modern  bard's 


82  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  ni. 

own  lifetime,  the  task  becomes  far  more  difficult,  and 
has  foiled  poets  of  very  high  reputation,  as  in  the 
case  of  Walter  Scott,  who  has  given  us  a  magnificent 
battle  piece  of  Flodden,  but  two  very  inferior  poems 
upon  Waterloo.  You  cannot  be  romantic  over  a  con- 
temporary battle  or  siege  that  has  just  been  fully 
described  in  the  newspapers,  for  the  public  knows 
exactly  what  happened;  while  if  you  attempt  to  be 
severely  realistic  you  are  lost  among  unmanageable 
details  ;  and  you  find  yourself  emphatically  versifying 
what  has  already  been  said  with  the  effective  actuality 
of  prose. 


CHAPTER  IV 
MAUD;  IDYLLS  OF  THE  KING;  ENOCH  ARDEN 

IN  August  1852  a  son  (the  present  Lord  Tennyson) 
had  been  born  in  their  house  at  Twickenham ;  and  in 
the  next  year  they  had  at  last  found  a  permanent 
abiding  place.  For  in  1853  Tennyson,  having  by  this 
time  an  income  of  £500  a  year  from  his  poems,  bought 
Farringford  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  his  favourite  habita- 
tion ever  afterwards,  within  sight  of  the  sea,  and 
within  sound  of  its  waves  in  a  storm ;  with  the  lawns, 
spreading  trees,  and  meadows  running  up  to  the  skirts 
of  windy  downs,  that  have  been  frequently  sketched 
in  his  poetry,  and  will  long  be  identified  with  his 
presence.  There  he  worked,  morning  and  evening,  at 
"  Maud,"  sitting  in  his  high-backed  wooden  chair  in  a 
little  room  at  the  top  of  the  house,  and  smoking  the 
sacred  pipes  during  certain  half -hours  of  strict  seclusion 
when  his  best  thoughts  came  to  him.1 

In  1837  a  collection  of  verses  had  been  published 

under  the  title  of  The  Tribute,  signifying  that  they 

were  contributed  by  various  writers  of  repute  at  that 

time,  in  order  that  the  profits  of  a  subscription  list  to 

the  volume  might  be  offered  to  a  man  of  letters  who 

had   fallen   into   poverty.      Monckton   Milnes   wrote 

round  for  subscriptions  to  all  his  friends,  among  others 

to  Alfred  Tennyson,  who  sent  a  humorous  refusal, 

1  Memoir. 

83 


84  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

averring  that  lie  had  sworn  never  to  assist  in  such 
enterprises.  Monckton  Milnes  did  not  appreciate  the 
bantering  tone  of  the  letter,  was  angered  by  the 
refusal,  and  wrote  a  sour  answer,  whereupon  Tennyson 
turned  away  his  wrath  with  good-natured  expostula- 
tion, and  sent  his  contribution.  It  is  a  short  poem 
of  passionate  lamentation  for  a  woman  who  has  been 
loved  and  is  lost ;  and  it  not  only  contains  the  theme 
upon  which  Maud  was  long  afterwards  worked  out 
dramatically,  but  the  stanzas  reappear,  with  slight 
changes  and  considerable  omissions,  in  the  twenty- 
fourth  section  of  the  later  poem;  nor  did  Tennyson 
ever  rise  higher  in  the  elegiac  strain  than  in  some  of 
the  best  of  them :  — 

"  O  that  'twere  possible 
After  long  grief  and  pain 
To  find  the  arms  of  my  true  love 

Eound  me  once  again  ! 
******* 

"  Alas  for  her  that  met  me, 
That  heard  me  softly  call, 
Came  glimmering  thro'  the  laurels 
At  the  quiet  evenfall, 
In  the  garden  by  the  turrets 
Of  the  old  manorial  hall."  * 

The  fifth  edition  of  In  Memoriam  had  been  published 
in  1852.  It  was  followed  in  1855  by  the  first  appear- 
ance of  Maud,  which  Lowell  rather  affectedly  calls  the 
antiphonal  voice  of  the  earlier  poem.  The  change  of 
subject,  tone,  and  manner  was  certainly  striking;  and 

1  As  The  Tribute  is  now  a  very  rare  book,  it  is  worth  mentioning 
that  this  poem,  in  its  original  form,  may  be  found  at  the  end  of  vol. 
Ixxix.  of  the  Annual  Register  (1837).  The  sub-editor  of  the  time 
was  rebuked  by  his  chief  for  having  inserted  among  his  selections 
from  the  year's  poetry  a  bit  of  trivial  verse. 


iv.]  MAUD  86 

the  public  seem  to  have  been  taken  by  surprise.  The 
transition  was  from  irremediable  sorrow  to  irresistible 
passion ;  from  philosophic  meditation  to  a  romantic 
love  story  with  a  tragic  ending ;  from  stanzas  swaying 
slowly  like  a  dirge  within  their  uniform  compass,  to 
an  abundant  variety  of  metrical  movement,  according 
with  the  changes  of  scene  and  attuned  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  plot  through  ardent  courtship  to  the 
lover's  triumph,  to  detection,  a  duel,  the  frenzy  of 
remorse,  and  the  final  chant  of  liberation  from  all 
these  miserable  memories,  when  "the  old  hysterical 
mock  disease"  is  forgotten  and  overpowered  in  the 
tumultuous  agitation  of  a  great  national  war.  The  gen- 
eral reader  was  unfavourably  prepossessed  by  the  tone 
of  restless  despondency  that  runs  through  the  open- 
ing stanzas,  and  by  the  intimations  of  a  morbid  tem- 
perament, of  a  sickly  cast  of  thought,  which  are  given 
as  the  premonitory  symptoms  of  a  mind  unfitted  to 
withstand  the  shock  of  a  sudden  catastrophe.  The 
light  literary  reviewer  was  disposed  to  be  satirical 
upon  a  hero  whose  attitude  was  not  heroical;  the 
higher  criticism  was  divided.  The  poet  was,  in  fact, 
contending  against  a  difficulty  that  is  inseparable 
from  the  form  of  a  metrical  romance  in  which  a  single 
personage  tells  his  own  story ;  for  while  a  skilful 
novelist  would  easily  have  sketched  such  a  character, 
or  a  playwright  might  have  brought  it  out  by  action 
and  dialogue,  yet  when  a  man  is  set  up  to  confess  his 
own  intense  sensibility,  to  describe  his  own  misery 
and  madness,  the  part  becomes  much  harder  to  man- 
age, and  the  audience  is  apt  to  become  impatient  with 
him.  Nevertheless  Henry  Taylor,  Ruskin,  Jowett, 
and  the  Brownings  spoke  without  hesitation  of  the 


86  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

poem's  great  merits.  Tyndall  bought  the  volume  on 
his  way  to  a  theatre  one  evening ;  he  read  it  between 
the  acts  of  the  performance,  continued  it  outside  in 
the  street,  and  had  reached  the  end  before  he  got 
home.  He  admired  it  extremely,  and  Lord  Houghton, 
who  agreed  with  him,  exclaimed  that  the  reviewers 
were  blundering.1  Jowett  wrote :  — 

"  No  poem  since  Shakespeare  seems  to  show  equal  power 
of  the  same  kind,  or  equal  knowledge  of  human  nature. 
No  modern  poem  contains  more  lines  that  ring  in  the  ears 
of  men.  I  do  not  know  any  verse  out  of  Shakespeare  in 
which  the  ecstasy  of  love  soars  to  such  a  height." 

This  is  certainly  no  faint  praise ;  and  although  the 
general  verdict  would  be  that  it  is  excessive,  we  have 
at  any  rate  the  first  impression  made  by  the  poem's 
emotional  force  upon  a  very  critical  intellect. 

"The  peculiarity  of  Maud,"  Tennyson  said,  "is  that 
different  phases  of  passion  in  one  person  take  the 
place  of  different  characters " ;  and  the  effect  of  his 
own  recitation  was  to  set  this  conception  in  clear 
relief,  by  showing  the  connection  and  significance  of 
the  linked  monodies,  combined  with  the  vivid  musical 
rendering  of  a  pathetic  love  story.  The  first  spark 
of  love  kindles  rapidly  into  heat,  and  the  emotion 
rises  by  degrees  of  intensity  to  the  rapture  of  meeting 
Maud  in  the  garden,  falling  again  suddenly  to  the 
depths  of  bitter  despair ;  until  the  luckless  youth  again 
recovers  heart  and  strength  in  the  stir  and  rumour  of 
national  war,  and  determines,  as  many  have  done  before 
him,  to  stiffen  his  nerves  by  a  course  of  energetic 
activity,  and  to  try  the  bracing  tonic  of  real  danger. 

The  poem  in  its  development  strikes  all  the  lyrical 
1  Memoir. 


iv.]  MAUD  87 

chords,  although  it  cannot  be  said  that  all  of  them  are 
touched  with  equal  skill.  Probably  the  sustained  and 
perfect  execution  of  such  a  varied  composition  would 
be  too  arduous  a  task  for  any  artist,  since  it  is  no 
easy  matter  to  substitute,  dramatically,  different 
phases  of  passion  in  one  person  for  different  char- 
acters. Some  considerable  mental  agility  is  needed 
to  fall  in  with  the  rapid  changes  of  mood  and  motive 
which  succeed  each  other  within  the  compass  of  a 
piece  that  is  too  short  for  the  delineation  of  character : 
ranging  from  melodramatic  horror  in  the  opening 
stanzas  to  passionate  and  joyous  melodies  in  the 
middle  part,  sinking  into  a  dolorous  wail,  rising  into 
frenzy,  and  closing  with  the  trumpet  note  of  war. 

The  Monodrama  has  in  fact  its  peculiar  difficulties 
of  execution :  the  speaker  has  to  introduce  himself, 
and  to  explain  the  situation  in  a  kind  of  indirect 
narrative  that  must  be  kept  up  to  the  lyrical  pitch  by 
effort  and  emphasis.  The  strain  of  this  necessity  is 
especially  visible  at  the  beginning  of  Maud,  because 
the  story  opens  with  the  familiar  incident  of  financial 
disaster,  and  ordinary  matters  of  fact  have  to  be 
draped  in  the  garb  of  poetry.  The  father  of  the  solilo- 
quist has  been  ruined  by  the  failure  of  a  great  specu- 
lation, which  is  understood  to  have  enriched  Maud's 
father ;  and  the  son  naturally  denounces  lying  finan- 
ciers and  mercantile  greed  in  general,  contrasting  the 
ill-gotten  luxury  of  a  society  which  must  cheat  or  be 
cheated  with  the  hideous  misery  and  crime  of  the 
poor.  If  these  be  the  cankers  of  a  calm  world,  the 
blessings  of  Peace ;  if  pickpockets,  burglars,  and 
swindlers  are  to  flourish,  he  infinitely  prefers  "  the 
heart  of  the  citizen  hissing  in  war  on  his  own  hearth- 


88  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

stone,"  the  ardour  of  battle,  the  supreme  struggle  that 
turns  every  man  into  a  patriot  and  a  soldier.  Clearly 
the  poet  is  here  compelled  by  the  story's  need  of  ele- 
vation, at  this  part  of  it,  to  paint  in  sombre  or  star- 
tling colours,  to  rhapsodise  somewhat  beyond  reason, 
to  overflow  with  scornful  invective,  and  to  allow  a 
solitary  youth  to  justify  his  disgust  of  life  by  railing 
at  the  degradation  and  rottenness  of  the  world  around 
him.  It  is  Locksley  Hall  with  the  cry  of  revolt 
against  modern  society  pitched  an  octave  higher; 
and  in  the  first  and  fourth  sections  there  is  so  much 
in  this  vein  that  the  melodramatic  impression  is  not 
easily  shaken  off.  Englishmen  at  large  hesitate  over 
thunderous  denunciations,  in  verse,  of  social  wrongs ; 
and  the  sorrows  or  disappointments  of  the  money 
market  are  good  matter  for  the  prose  writer,  but 
hardly  for  the  poet,  who  cannot  be  expected  to  give 
the  economist  or  the  politician  fair  play.  Questions  of 
this  kind  belong  to  the  frigid  utilitarian  order,  and  it 
is  dangerous  to  handle  them  enthusiastically. 

But  the  vision  of  Maud,  his  playmate  in  childhood, 
scatters  all  these  distempered  complainings ;  and  the 
young  man  becomes  absorbed  in  the  love  of  a  beauti- 
ful girl.  The  wooing  and  the  winning  of  her,  the 
rapid  growth  of  a  mutual  passion,  the  stolen  meetings, 
the  plighting  of  troth,  the  ecstasy  of  his  adoration, 
the  waiting  for  her  in  the  garden  after  a  ball,  are  told 
in  a  series  of  exquisite  lyrics,  of  which  it  may  be  said 
that  the  English  language  contains  none  better  than 
the  very  best  of  them.  The  subtle  influences  of  sight 
and  sound,  of  dawn  and  twilight, 

"  the  voice  of  the  long  sea  wave  as  it  swelled 
Now  and  then  in  the  dim  gray  dawn," 


iv.]  MAUD  89 

the  call  of  the  birds  in  the  high  Hall  garden,  the 
spreading  cedar,  the  glance  of  an  evening  sun  over 
the  dark  moorland,  the  chilly  white  inist  falling  like 
a  shroud,  mingle  with  and  heighten  the  romance  of 
their  secret  love  passages,  and  bring  shadowy  pre- 
sentiments of  danger.  The  stars  shine  brighter  as  he 
looks  at  them  and  thinks  of  his  sleeping  lady :  — 

"But  now  by  this  my  love  has  closed  her  sight 
And  given  false  death  her  hand,  and  stol'n  away 
To  dreamful  wastes  where  footless  fancies  dwell 
Among  the  fragments  of  the  golden  day. 

******* 
And  ye  meanwhile  far  over  moor  and  fell 

Beat  to  the  noiseless  music  of  the  night ! 
Has  our  whole  earth  gone  nearer  to  the  glow 
Of  your  soft  splendours  that  you  look  so  bright  ? 
Beat,  happy  stars,  timing  with  things  below, 
Beat  with  my  heart  more  blest  than  heart  can  tell, 
Blest,  but  for  some  dark  undercurrent  woe." 

Yet  the  poet  is  still  hampered  by  the  necessity  of 
explaining  his  plot,  and  of  describing  the  dramatis 
personce  through  the  mouth  of  a  single  actor ;  and  so 
the  sensitive  lover  has  to  tell  of  his  meeting  with  the 
young  lord,  his  rival,  who, 

"  Leisurely  tapping  a  glossy  boot, 

And  curving  a  contumelious  lip, 

Gorgonised  me  from  head  to  foot 

With  a  stony  British  stare." 

This  sharp  figure-drawing,  almost  caricature,  would  be 
excellent  in  a  novel  or  upon  the  stage  ;  but  when  it  is 
interposed  among  tender  idyllic  melodies  there  is  a  jar 
upon  the  delicate  ear ;  there  is  a  lapse  into  undignified 
expression  which  is  incompatible  with  the  refined 
exaltation  of  tone  that  is  essential  to  a  romantic 
passion-play.  In  his  beautiful  song  of  rapturous 


90  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

expectation,  "  Come  into  the  garden,  Maud,"  the  poet 
rises  to  the  highest  point  of  his  verse  just  when  the 
drama  reaches  its  climax ;  for  the  end  of  the  romance 
has  come,  and  the  whole  pageantry  of  love-making 
vanishes  like  a  dream.  The  lovers  are  detected,  there 
is  a  furious  quarrel,  a  fatal  duel ;  and  the  unfortunate 
hero  is  next  found,  mad  with  despair  and  remorse,  on 
the  coast  of  Brittany. 

The  first  title  proposed  for  the  poem  was  "Maud 
and  the  Madness";  and  a  leading  specialist  for  in- 
sanity wrote  that  it  was  the  most  faithful  representa- 
tion of  madness  since  Shakespeare.1  Such  a  certificate 
is  but  of  moderate  value  in  poetry,  where  success 
depends  on  artistic  treatment  of  the  subject;  and  in 
Shakespeare  the  disease  is  never  more  than  an  acces- 
sory to  the  delineation  of  his  principal  characters. 
Hamlet  was  mad  only  when  he  chose  to  be  so ;  nor  is 
it  possible  to  agree  with  Tennyson  when  he  said,  in 
alluding  to  some  captious  reviews,  that  "  without  the 
prestige  of  Shakespeare  Hamlet  (if  it  came  out  now) 
would  be  treated  in  just  the  same  way"  by  incom- 
petent critics.  The  two  characters,  Hamlet  and  Maud's 
lover,  will  not  bear  a  moment's  comparison  from  any 
point  of  view.  But  delirium  is  far  less  manageable  in 
a  poem  than  in  a  play,  where  violent  scenes  and 
speeches  are  admissible ;  and  if  we  allow  for  this  inev- 
itable difficulty  of  execution,  it  may  be  agreed  that  the 
wandering  incoherent  mind  of  Maud's  lover  in  his 
madness  is  effectively  rendered.  The  final  strophes 
of  the  poem  have  some  strenuous  and  animated  lines, 
representing  a  puissant  nation  rising  boldly  to  the 
alarm  of  war,  which  is  to  purge  the  people  of  sloth 
1  Memoir. 


iv.]  MAUD  91 

and  mean  cupidity,  and  to  unite  them  in  one  patriotic 
impulse.  Some  such  notions  of  fighting  as  a  whole- 
some restorative  had  been  engendered,  in  1855,  among 
home-keeping  Englishmen  by  forty  years  of  peace; 
but  since  that  time  they  have  learnt  by  experience 
what  war  really  signifies ;  and  the  belief  that  it  is 
a  good  medicine  for  the  cankers  of  plethoric  prosperity 
must  now  have  fallen  considerably  out  of  fashion.  Mr. 
Gladstone,  in  the  Quarterly  Review  of  1855,  protested 
against  the  doctrine  that  war  is  a  cure  for  moral  evil, 
or  that  it  is  a  specific  for  the  particular  evil  of 
Mammon  worship.  He  maintained,  on  the  contrary, 
that  modern  war  is  a  remarkable  incentive  to  that 
worship ;  though  Tennyson  might  have  replied  that  in 
Milton's  great  council  of  war  Mammon's  speech  is 
ignobly  pacific.  There  is  at  any  rate  a  curious  adum- 
bration of  recent  incidents  in  one  sentence  of  this 
article,  where  it  is  said  that  "  war  in  its  moral  opera- 
tion resembles,  perhaps,  more  than  anything  else  the 
finding  of  a  gold-field."  Mr.  Gladstone,  however,  con- 
siderably qualified  his  first  adverse  judgment  in  a  note 
(dated  1878)  that  he  appended  to  this  article  when  it 
was  republished  in  his  Gleanings  of  Past  Years  — 

"  Whether  it  is  to  be  desired  that  a  poem  should  require 
from  common  men  a  good  deal  of  effort  in  order  to  compre- 
hend it;  whether  all  that  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  the 
Soliloquist  in  '  Maud '  is  within  the  lines  of  poetical  verisi- 
militude ;  whether  this  poem  has  the  full  moral  equilibrium 
which  is  so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the  sister-works ;  are 
questions  open,  perhaps,  to  discussion.  But  I  have  neither 
done  justice  in  the  text  to  its  rich  and  copious  beauties  of 
detail,  nor  to  its  great  lyrical  and  metrical  power.  And  what 
is  worse,  I  have  failed  to  comprehend  rightly  the  relation 
between  particular  passages  in  the  poem  and  its  general 


92  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

scope.  This  is,  I  conceive,  not  to  set  forth  any  coherent 
strain,  but  to  use  for  poetical  ends  all  the  moods  and  phases 
allowable  under  the  laws  of  the  art,  in  a  special  form  of 
character,  which  is  impassioned,  fluctuating,  and  ill-grounded. 
The  design,  which  seems  to  resemble  that  of  the  Ecclesiastes 
in  another  sphere,  is  arduous ;  but  Mr.  Tennyson's  power  of 
execution  is  probably  nowhere  greater." 

The  allusion  to  Ecclesiastes  is  enigmatic,  for  the 
Preacher  deals  with  neither  love  nor  war,  and  his 
theme  is  that  all  luxury,  pleasure,  and  the  delight  of 
the  senses,  are  but  vexation  and  vanity.  If  any  re- 
semblance with  Tennyson's  poetry  is  to  be  found  in 
Ecclesiastes,  it  should  be  with  the  Palace  of  Art.1 

In  the  same  article  it  is  observed,  truly,  that  Tenny- 
son's war  poetry  is  not  equal  to  his  poetry  of  peace. 
One  may  add  that  neither  irony,  nor  fierce  invective, 
suits  Tennyson's  genius  very  well;  they  carry  him 
too  near  to  the  perilous  domain  of  rhetoric.  It  is  to 
the  lays  of  love  and  heartrending  lamentation  in 
Maud,  with  their  combined  intensity  and  refinement, 
that  unqualified  praise  may  be  accorded,  to  their 
romantic  grace  and  their  soft  cadences,  in  which  the 
melody  seems  inseparable  from  the  meaning. 

For  Onomatopoeia,  which  began  by  direct  imitation 

1  Ecclesiastes  ii.  4,  5,  6,  8,  11  — 

"  I  made  me  great  works;  I  builded  me  houses;  I  planted  me 
vineyards : 

******* 

"  I  gathered  me  also  silver  and  gold,  and  the  peculiar' treasure  of 
kings  and  of  the  provinces :  I  gat  me  men  singers  and  women 
singers,  and  the  delights  of  the  sons  of  men,  as  musical  instru- 
ments, and  that  of  all  sorts. 

******* 

"  Then  I  looked  on  all  the  works  that  my  hands  had  wrought, 
and  on  the  labour  that  I  had  laboured  to  do:  and,  behold,  all  was 
vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit,  and  there  was  no  profit  under  the 
sun." 


iv.]  MAUD  93 

of  natural  sounds,  has  been  developed  by  the  highest 
art  of  poetry  into  prolonged  associations  of  sound  and 
sense.  A  single  line  may  set  the  ear  listening ;  it 
stirs  the  memory  by  recalling  what  has  been  once 
heard,  or  by  making  the  words  echo  their  significance, 
as  for  example  in 

"By  the  long  wash  of  Australasian  seas." 
And  the  subtle  sensibility  that  adapts  the  word  to  the 
thing  adapts  the  sentence  or  cadence  to  the  general 
meaning  or  spirit  of  a  whole  passage,1  reviving  the 
impression  of  a  summer  dawn  in  a  garden,  the  scent 
of  flowers,  "  the  voice  of  the  long  sea  wave."  Becita- 
tion  is  a  better  test  of  these  qualities  than  reading,  for 
all  poetry  may  be  said  to  make  its  primary  appeal  to 
the  ear ;  and  even  the  length  of  the  lines  must  have 
formed  itself  to  a  great  degree  on  the  natural  con- 
ditions of  respiration  and  oral  delivery.  It  is  versifica- 
tion regularly  accentuated,  with  the  terminal  rhyme 
marking  each  line's  end  harmoniously,  that  now  chiefly 
delights  the  English  ear,  fixing  the  measure  by  a  recur- 
rent chime,  a  beautiful  invention  that  is  nevertheless  a 
comparatively  recent  importation  into  European  verse. 
In  our  earliest  poetry  the  place  of  the  accents  was 
indicated  by  alliteration ;  while  since  there  was  no 
terminal  bar,  the  line's  length  might  be  varied  at  the 
composer's  discretion.  Some  of  the  cantos  in  Maud 
seem  to  have  been  so  far  constructed  on  a  similar 
principle,  that  the  lines  vary  considerably  in  length, 
and  the  rhyme  is  sounded  with  remarkable  skill 
at  irregular  intervals,  marking  fluctuations  of  emo- 
tion. We  have  here,  in  fact,  something  resembling 

1  See  a  dissertation  011  Onomatopoeia  in  Jowett's  Plato,  vol.  i. 
p.  310. 


94  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

what  is  called  in  France  the  Vers  Libre,  manipu- 
lated by  a  master  of  harmonies  —  a  metrical  arrange- 
ment of  which,  though  it  is  no  innovation  in  our 
poetry,  Tennyson  has  made  superior  use.  For  al- 
though Southey  discarded  regularity  of  length  in 
the  verse  of  Thalaba  and  Kehama,  the  prevailing  form 
in  those  poems  is  the  ten-syllable  blank  verse  metre, 
varied  by  shorter  iambic  lines,  with  a  correctness  of 
scansion  that  becomes  monotonous.  In  Maud  the 
poet  by  no  means  despises  alliteration ;  he  is  rather 
apt  to  overstrain  it  occasionally  as  a  method  of  en- 
forcing the  sense  of  a  line  by  its  sound,  and  of 
weighing  its  accentuation. 

"The  shrill-edged  shriek  of  a  mother  divides  the  shuddering 
night" 

******* 
"And  out  he  walked  when  the  wind  like  a  broken  worlding 

wailed," 

******* 
But  the  value  of  his  experiment  comes  from  his 

dexterity  in  expanding  the  undulating  flexibility  of 
the  old  English  free  verse,  with  the  rhymes  interposed 
as  an  accompaniment  to  the  metre,  and  falling  on  the 
expectant  ear  like  the  chime  of  bells.  Nor  do  we  ever 
detect  in  Tennyson,  as  we  do  too  often  in  Browning, 
the  insincere  or  superfluous  phrase  that  is  brought 
in  for  the  rhyme's  sake,  and  is  accommodated  with 
more  or  less  dexterity  to  the  poet's  real  intention. 
Throughout  his  poetry  we  have  constantly  reason  to 
admire  his  resource  and  capacity  for  shaping  metrical 
forms  to  suit  the  impression  that  he  desires  to  convey ; 
while  in  such  pieces  as  The  Talking  Oak  we  may 
appreciate  the  light  and  delicate  touch  of  his  hand 
upon  the  standard  customary  metres  of  our  language, 


iv.]  IDYLLS   OF   THE   KING  05 

Having  by  this  time  taken  up  his  settled  quarters 
at  Farringford,  Tennyson  was  now  seriously  occupied 
with  his  work  upon  the  Arthurian  legends,  which 
had  already  furnished  him  with  material  for  some  of 
the  best  among  his  minor  poems.  Two  Idylls  were 
in  print  by  1857,  and  in  1859  the  first  four  were  pub- 
lished. The  poet  then  took  ship  for  Lisbon,  whence 
he  contemplated  a  journey  into  southern  Spain;  but 
he  was  an  impatient  traveller,  who  loved  above  all 
things  his  own  land,  not  largely  endued  with  the  much- 
enduring  temper  of  his  Ulysses ;  so  the  autumnal  heat 
and  the  mosquitoes  drove  him  back  to  England  within 
a  month.  Meanwhile,  the  Idylls  were  rapidly  and 
widely  taken  up  by  the  English  public,  with  many 
congratulations  from  personal  friends.  Thackeray 
sends,  after  reading  them,  a  letter  full  of  his  charac- 
teristic humour  and  good-fellowship  — 

"  The  landlord  —  at  Folkestone  —  gave  two  bottles  of  his 
claret,  and  I  think  I  drank  the  most ;  and  here  I  have  been 
lying  back  in  the  chair  and  thinking  of  those  delightful  Idylls, 
my  thoughts  being  turned  to  you  ;  and  what  could  I  do  but 
be  grateful  to  that  surprising  genius  which  has  made  me  so 
happy." 

Jowett  wrote  enthusiastically  of  the  "  Maid  of 
Astolat "  — 

"  There  are  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  all  ages,  men  as  well 
as  women,  who,  although  they  have  not  died  for  love  (have  no 
intention  of  doing  so),  will  find  there  a  sort  of  ideal  consolation 
of  their  own  troubles  and  remembrances." 

The  Duke  of  Argyll's  praise  is  slightly,  though 
unintentionally,  ambiguous.  "Your  Idylls  of  the 
King,"  he  tells  the  author,  "  will  be  understood  and 
admired  by  many  who  are  incapable  of  understanding 


96  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  appreciating  many  others  of  your  works."  He 
goes  on  — 

"  Macaulay  is  certainly  not  a  man  incapable  of  under- 
standing anything,  but  I  knew  that  his  tastes  in  poetry 
were  so  formed  in  another  line  that  I  considered  him  a  good 
test,  and  three  days  ago  I  gave  him  '  Guinevere '  —  " 

with  the  result  that  Macaulay  was  "  delighted  with  it." 
Upon  this  Tennyson  responds  to  His  Grace  somewhat 
caustically  — 

"  MY  DEAR  DUKE,  —  Doubtless  Macaulay's  good  opinion 
is  worth  having,  and  I  am  grateful  to  you  for  letting  me 
know  it,  but  this  time  I  intend  to  be  thick-skinned  ;  nay,  I 
scarcely  believe  that  I  should  ever  feel  very  deeply  the  pen- 
punctures  of  those  parasitic  animalcules  of  the  press,  if  they 
kept  themselves  to  what  I  write,  and  did  not  glance  spite- 
fully and  personally  at  myself.  I  hate  spite." 1 

Folklore  has  rarely  undergone  such  changes  of 
style  and  transformations  of  environment  in  its 
passage  through  different  countries  and  successive 
generations,  as  the  Arthurian  legend  has  exhibited 
from  its  origin  among  the  Celts  of  insular  Britain 
to  its  latest  revival  in  modern  English  poetry.  The 
lays  and  tales  of  Arthur  and  his  knights,  the  relics 
of  a  large  number  that  have  been  lost,  were  saved 
from  oblivion  in  England  by  the  Anglo-Normans, 
whose  poetic  instinct  led  them  to  enjoy  in  their 
courts  and  castles  the  songs  of  wandering  minstrels 
and  popular  stories  of  marvellous  adventure.  Thus 
the  primitive  element  took  a  Eomanesque  fashion, 
and  was  expanded  in  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  chivalry ; 
the  legends  were  translated  into  French  and  English, 
!A11  these  quotations  are  taken  from  the  Memoir. 


IT.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE  KING  97 

until  at  last  they  were  gathered  together  and  fixed 
permanently  in  an  English  form  when  Caxton  printed 
Sir  Thomas  Malory's  collection.  A  whole  cycle  sur- 
rounds the  central  figure  of  King  Arthur,  whom  one 
may  conjecture  to  have  embodied  the  true  tradition  of 
some  valiant  chief  who  fought  hard  for  his  lands  and 
his  people  against  the  Saxon  invaders ;  for  in  a  pre- 
historic age  it  is  the  real  hero,  famous  when  he  lived, 
who  becomes  fabulous  after  his  death.  And  so  Arthur 
emerged  out  of  a  period  of  darkest  confusion,  trail- 
ing after  him  Christian  myths  and  heroic  legends ; 
he  passed  through  wandering  minstrelsy  to  prose 
romance,  and  then  again  into  poetry  when  he  became 
the  portrait,  in  Spenser's  Fairy  Queen,  of  a  brave 
knight  perfected  in  the  twelve  moral  virtues,  the 
leading  actor  in  an  allegory  that  is  supposed  to  teach 
morals  and  politics  under  a  transparent  masque  of 
adventurous  knight-errantry. 

"  The  generall  end,  therefore,  of  all  the  book  is  to  fashion  a 
gentleman  or  noble  person  in  virtuous  and  gentle  discipline, 
which  for  that  I  conceived  shoulde  be  more  plausible  and 
pleasing,  being  coloured  into  an  historical  fiction,  the  which 
the  most  part  of  men  delight  to  read,  rather  for  variety  of 
matter  than  for  profite  of  the  ensample,  I  chose  the  historye  of 
King  Arthur,  as  most  fit  for  the  excellency  of  his  person,  being 
made  famous  by  many  men's  former  works,  and  also  furthest 
from  the  daunger  of  envy  and  suspicion  of  the  present  time." x 

During  the  classical  and  rationalistic  period  of 
eighteenth-century  poetry  King  Arthur's  romantic 
figure  suffered  eclipse,  until  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century  Malory's  book  was  republished.  And  lastly 
he  shone  out  again  fifty  years  later  in  the  Idylls, 
1  Spenser's  "  Letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  "  (1589). 


98  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

modelled  by  Tennyson  after  the  type  used  by  Spenser, 
as  the  image  of  lofty  morality,  the  modern  gentleman, 
the  magnanimous  husband  of  an  unworthy  queen.  As 
Spenser  dedicated  his  poem  to  "  Elizabeth,  by  the 
Grace  of  God,  Queen  of  England,  France,  and  Ireland 
and  Virginia,"  so  Tennyson  offered  the  Idylls  as  his 
tribute  to  the  Sovereign  of  far  wider  dominions :  — 

"But  thou,  my  Queen, 
Not  for  itself,  but  thro'  thy  living  love 
For  one  to  whom  I  made  it  o'er  his  grave 
Sacred,  accept  this  old  imperfect  tale, 
New-old,  and  shadowing  Sense  at  war  with  Soul, 
Ideal  manhood  closed  in  real  man, 
Kather  than  that  gray  king,  whose  name,  a  ghost, 
Streams  like  a  cloud,  man-shaped,  from  mountain  peak, 
And  cleaves  to  cairn  and  cromlech  still ;  or  him 
Of  Geoffrey's  book,  or  him  of  Malleor's,  one 
Touch'd  by  the  adulterous  finger  of  a  time 
That  hover'd  between  war  and  wantonness." 

Thus  Arthur  is  still  a  poet's  ideal  and  illustration  of 
unstained  virtue  and  manliness,  with  the  difference 
that  his  environment  of  fairyland,  enchantments, 
and  adventurous  gallantry,  has  become  much  more 
strange  to  modern  readers  than  it  was  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  when  Spenser  used  the  conventional  romantic 
style  and  apparatus  that  were  current  in  his  day. 
Arthur  does  not  even  represent,  in  dim  outline,  the 
lineaments  of  some  famous  historical  personage,  like 
Charlemagne  or  even  Roland  ;  he  is  an  unsubstantial 
and  almost  wholly  fabulous  model  of  chivalric  perfec- 
tion; the  Round  Table,  the  Knights  errant,  Merlin, 
the  Holy  Grail,  are  employed  as  the  framework  of  a 
picture  restored  and  repainted ;  the  costumes  and 
scenery  of  the  drama  are  antique,  with  a  revised 


iv.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE   KING  99 

version  of  the  characters.  A  modern  romance  of 
chivalry  is  necessarily  a  restoration,  with  the  details 
of  character,  circumstance,  and  manners  reproduced, 
as  in  Scott's  romances,  more  or  less  accurately  from 
the  surviving  records  of  the  time.  In  the  case  of  the 
Arthurian  idylls  this  accessory  work  could  not  be  done, 
because  authentic  materials  are  entirely  wanting ;  the 
scenes,  personages,  and  situations  are  either  mythical, 
or  at  most  reflect  later  mediaeval  ideas  and  types.  To 
a  certain  extent  this  has  been  a  drawback  upon  the 
popularity  of  a  brilliant  poetic  enterprise ;  for  it  was 
inevitable  that  upon  the  critical,  naturalistic,  exact- 
ing temper  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  its  third 
quarter  the  Idylls  should  have  produced  some  feeling 
of  incongruousness,  of  perfection  in  art  with  a  lack  of 
actuality  —  an  impression  of  the  kind  that  is  delicately 
conveyed  in  a  letter  from  Ruskin  to  Tennyson  soon 
after  the  publication  of  the  new  poems.  The  four 
songs  seemed  to  him  the  jewels  of  the  crown,  and 
certain  passages  he  reckoned  to  be  "  finer  than  almost 
all  you  have  done  yet.  Nevertheless  "  (he  went  on), 

"  I  am  not  sure  but  I  feel  the  art  and  finish  in  these  poems 
a  little  more  than  I  like  to  feel  it.  Yet  I  am  not  a  fair  judge 
quite,  for  I  am  so  much  of  a  realist  as  not  by  any  possibility 
to  interest  myself  much  in  an  unreal  subject,  to  feel  it  as  I 
should,  and  the  very  sweetness  and  stateliness  of  the  words 
strike  me  all  the  more  as  pure  workmanship.  .  .  .  Treasures 
of  wisdom  there  are  in  it,  and  word-painting  such  as  never 
was  yet  for  concentration,  nevertheless  it  seems  to  me  that  so 
great  power  ought  not  to  be  spent  on  visions  of  things  past, 
but  on  the  living  present.  For  one  hearer  capable  of  feeling 
the  depth  of  this  poem,  I  believe  ten  would  feel  a  depth  quite 
as  great  if  the  stream  flowed  through  things  nearer  the  hearer. 
...  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  intense,  masterful,  and  un- 
erring transcript  of  an  actuality,  and  the  relation  of  a  story  of 


100  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

any  real  human  life  as  a  poet  would  watch  and  analyse  it, 
would  make  all  men  feel  more  or  less  what  poetry  was,  as  they 
felt  what  Life  and  Fate  were  in  their  instant  workings." 1 

Ruskin  here  touches  and  indicates  a  line  of  criticism 
upon  the  general  conception  of  the  Idylls,  as  shown  by 
their  treatment  of  the  Arthurian  legends,  with  which, 
although  some  may  pronounce  it  inadequate,  many 
may  be  disposed  to  agree.  Romance-writing  has  been 
defined,  half  seriously,  as  the  art  of  producing  the 
literary  work  that  can  give  the  greatest  imaginative 
pleasure  to  a  people  in  the  actual  state  of  their  habits 
and  beliefs.  The  Idylls  adapted  the  mythical  tales 
of  the  Round  Table  to  the  very  highest  standard  of 
aesthetic  taste,  intellectual  refinement,  and  moral  deli- 
cacy then  prevailing  in  cultivated  English  society ;  and 
by  that  society  they  were  very  cordially  appreciated. 
Undoubtedly  the  figure  of  Arthur  —  representing  a 
warrior-king  endowed  with  the  qualities  of  unselfish- 
ness, clemency,  generosity,  and  noble  trustfulness,  yet 
betrayed  by  his  wife  and  his  familiar  friend,  forgiving 
her,  and  going  forth  to  die  in  a  lost  fight  against 
treacherous  rebels — has  a  grandeur  and  a  pathos  that 
might  well  affect  a  gravely  emotional  people.  More- 
over, the  poem  is  a  splendidly  illuminated  Morality, 
unfolding  scenes  and  incidents  that  illustrate  heroic 
virtues  and  human  frailties,  gallantry,  sore  tempta- 
tions, domestic  perfidy,  chaste  virginal  love,  and  subtle 
amorous  enchantments.  It  abounds  also  in  descriptive 
passages  which  attest  the  close  attention  of  the  poet's 
ear  and  eye  to  natural  sights  and  sounds,  and  his  rare 
faculty  of  fashioning  his  verse  to  their  colours  and 
echoes.  In  short,  to  quote  from  the  Memoir  :  — 
1  Memoir. 


jv.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE   KING  101 

"  He  has  made  these  old  legends  his  own,  restored  the 
idealism,  infused  into  them  a  spirit  of  modem  thought  and 
of  ethical  significance ;  setting  his  characters  in  a  rich  and 
varied  landscape." 

This  indeed  he  has  done  well.  And  yet  these  archaic 
stories,  as  they  are  told  in  Malory's  fifteenth-century 
English,  which  preserves  the  romantic  flavour,  have 
never  lost  their  hold  on  the  English  world  at  large.  In 
their  latest  form  they  have  to  contend  with  the  modern 
prejudice  against  unreality,  against  the  sense  that  we 
have  here  a  vision  not  merely  of  things  that  are  past, 
but  of  things  that  could  never  have  been,  of  a  world 
that  is  neither  ancient  nor  modern,  but  a  fairyland 
peopled  with  knights  and  dames  whose  habits  and 
conversation  are  adjusted  to  the  decorous  manners  of 
our  nineteenth  century.  In  Malory's  time  the  legends 
were  apparently  regarded  by  the  ordinary  reader  as 
belonging  to  what  we  should  call  the  Romance  of 
History,  for  Caxton  relates  that  he  was  much  pressed 
"  to  emprynte  the  noble  history  of  the  Saynt  Graal  and 
that  most  renowned  crysten  king,  Arthur,"  but  that 
he  long  hesitated  because  of  the  opinion  that  all  such 
books  as  had  been  made  of  Arthur  had  been  "but 
fayned  and  fabled."  Yet  when  Malory's  book  was 
reprinted  in  1634,  the  editor  indignantly  reproved,  in 
his  preface,  the  incredulity  and  stupidity  of  those 
who  deny  or  make  doubt  of  Arthur's  immortal  name 
and  fame  ;  and  as  to  the  manner  of  writing,  he  affirmed 
that  he  has  only  corrected  it  where  "  King  Arthur 
and  some  of  his  knights  were  declared  to  swear 
prophane  and  use  superstitious  speeches."  The  tradi- 
tion was  still  regarded  as  not  wholly  fictitious,  with 
the  charm  of  antique  diction  hanging  about  it  to 


102  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

encourage  the  illusion ;  and  marvels  and  miracles, 
gods  and  giants,  were  commonly  accepted  with  a  kind 
of  half  belief  by  readers  who  took  little  account  of 
the  Improbable  or  the  Unnatural.  But  this  conven- 
tional understanding  has  long  disappeared;  the  con- 
ceptions are  now  universally  admitted  to  be  "  fayned 
and  fabled  " ;  and  it  has  become  much  more  difficult  to 
use  the  old  legends  as  mere  vehicles  for  new  man- 
ners and  ideas  than  it  was  to  translate  the  Celtic 
folklore  into  the  language  of  mediaeval  romance. 
Spenser's  Fairy  Queen  was  frankly  allegorical ;  and 
if  we  regard  the  Idylls  also  as  beautiful  allegories, 
we  may  be  content,  as  their  author  was,  with  his 
suggestion  that  King  Arthur  represents  conscience, 
and  that  the  poem  is  a  picture  of  the  different  ways 
in  which  men  looked  on  conscience,  some  reverencing 
it  as  a  heaven-born  king,  others  ascribing  to  it  an 
earthly  origin  —  a  philosophical  argument  set  forth  in 
a  parable.  We  may  then  be  satisfied  with  learning, 
from  the  poet  himself,  that  "  Camelot,  for  instance, 
a  city  of  shadowy  palaces,  is  everywhere  symbolical  of 
the  gradual  growth  of  human  beliefs  and  institutions, 
and  of  the  spiritual,  development  of  man."  Symbolism 
is  an  instrument  by  which  the  severe  and  peremptory 
dictates  of  formal  philosophy  or  religion  are  softened 
down  and  shaped  for  poetic  expression ;  and  in  the 
light  of  this  interpretation  the  Idylls  are  seen  to  be 
a  finely  woven  tissue  of  figurative  mysticism,  clothing 
the  antique  forms  with  fresh  esoteric  meaning. 

"  The  Holy  Grail,"  said  Tennyson,  "  is  one  of  the 
most  imaginative  of  my  poems.  I  have  expressed  there 
my  strong  feeling  as  to  the  reality  of  the  Unseen "  ; 
and  truly  in  no  other  Idyll  does  the  spiritual  signifi- 


iv.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE   KING  103 

cance  stand  out  so  clearly :  it  is  the  most  successful 
of  his  excursions  into  this  field  of  allegorical  romance. 
From  the  same  point  of  view  we  may  admire  and 
interpret,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  whole  collection, 
though  it  must  be  remarked  that  stories  with  a  moral 
lesson,  however  beautifully  told,  are  not  precisely 
allegories.  Moreover,  Tennyson  has  also  said  that 
"there  is  no  single  fact  or  incident  in  the  Idylls, 
however  seemingly  mystical,  which  cannot  be  ex- 
plained without  any  mystery  or  allegory  whatever," 
and  he  constantly  protested  against  pressing  too  far 
the  search  for  an  inner  meaning ;  he  would  not  admit 
an  obligation  to  find  it  everywhere.  He  would  have 
probably  accepted  the  theory  that  his  poem  should 
be  treated  as  a  renewed  presentation  of  the  tragic 
experience  of  life,  where  men  and  women  pay  the 
inevitable  penalty  of  sin  and  vice ;  and  where  never- 
theless the  highest  nobility  of  character  will  not 
ahvays  ward  off  unmerited  disaster  and  final  catas- 
trophe. The  legend  of  a  king's  ruin  through  his 
wife's  infidelity  is  an  ancient  tale  of  wrong,  that  has 
stamped  itself  on  the  popular  imagination  by  its  dra- 
matic force  and  the  contrast  of  characters.  Arthur 
the  King,  Lancelot  the  chief  warrior  of  his  host, 
Guinevere  the  peerless  beauty  who  brings  discord 
between  them,  Modred  the  traitor  knight,  represent 
personages  that  belong  to  epic  and  romance  in  various 
distant  ages  and  countries ;  the  traitor  meets  his 
punishment,  but  the  hero  perishes  unhappily.  Such 
was  the  lesson  of  the  primitive  story-teller,  from 
Homer  downward,  who  drew  life  from  natural  experi- 
ence, not  as  it  is  seen  through  the  romantic  colouring 
of  a  softer  moralising  age.  And  the  same  lesson  is  to. 


104  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

be  read  in  the  Idylls,  although  the  action  of  the  drama, 
the  conduct  and  character  of  the  leading  personages, 
are  applied  and  brought  home  to  the  modern  reader 
by  so  far  readjusting  them  as  to  bring  them  nearer 
to  the  feelings  and  proprieties  of  the  present  day. 
They  are  made  more  probable  in  order  that  they 
may  be  more  impressive  ;  the  poet  has  preserved  the 
ideals,  clothing  them  in  new  conventional  garments. 

That  Tennyson  could  excel  in  the  art  of  veiling 
an  experience  of  all  ages  under  an  allegory  we  know 
from  his  short  poem,  The  Lady  of  Shalott,  where 
the  mirror  of  the  shadows  of  the  passing  world,  and 
the  magic  web  that  the  lady  weaves  wearily,  are 
brought  in  to  give  an  atmosphere  of  mystery  to  the 
story  of  the  Maid  of  Astolat's  hopeless  passion  for 
Lancelot.  But  in  the  Idyll  of  Lancelot  and  Elaine  the 
treatment  is  no  longer  mysterious  but  naturalistic ; 
we  have  the  maiden's  timid  adoration  of  the  magnifi- 
cent knight,  the  grief  and  trouble  of  her  father  and 
brothers,  and  the  Queen's  angry  jealousy  at  hearing 
that  Lancelot  is  wearing  the  maiden's  token.  The 
shy  sweetness  of  Elaine,  who  is  dying  of  unrequited 
love,  is  contrasted  with  the  figure  of  the  superb 
imperious  Guinevere,  who  scorns  her  husband,  "  a 
moral  child  without  the  craft  to  rule,"  and  sharply 
suspects  her  paramour.  Lancelot  offers  her  the 
diamonds  which  he  has  won  with  a  sore  wound  at  a 
tournament,  and  she  flings  them  out  of  her  window 
into  the  river,  just  as  the  barge  with  the  dead  Maid  of 
Astolat  comes  floating  down  before  the  palace.  This 
incident  has  a  distant  resemblance  to  some  drama 
of  modern  society,  and,  indeed,  the  moral  of  this  Idyll 
is  so  plain  as  to  need  no  allegorical  interpretation ;  it 


iv.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE   KING  105 

is  a  tiue  parable  and  warning  for  men  and  women 
always  and  everywhere.  The  Idyll  interweaves  some 
magnificent  embroidery  upon  the  unvarnished  canvas 
of  the  old  romance ;  it  contains  the  plaintive  song  — 

"  Sweet  is  true  love  tho'  given  in  vain,  in  vain  ; 
And  sweet  is  death  who  puts  an  end  to  pain  "  — 

the  sighing  of  innocent  love  sinking  to  quiet  despair  — 
with  many  passages  of  tender  grace  and  animating 
imagery  — 

"  They  couch'd  their  spears  and  prick'd  their  steeds,  and  thus, 
Their  plumes  driv'n  backward  by  the  wind  they  made 
In  moving,  all  together  down  upon  him 
Bare,  as  a  wild  wave  in  the  wide  North-sea 
Green-glimmering  toward  the  summit,  bears,  with  all 
Its  stormy  crests  that  smoke  against  the  skies, 
Down  on  a  bark,  and  overbears  the  bark, 
And  him  that  helms  it,  so  they  overbore 
Sir  Lancelot  and  his  charger." 

At  the  central  situation  and  catastrophe  of  the 
Arthurian  epic  we  have  a  still  more  remarkable 
reconstruction  of  plot  and  character.  In  the  old 
chronicle,  when  Lancelot  and  Guinevere  are  at  last 
entrapped  and  beset,  the  knight  fights  his  way  out, 
and  the  Queen  is  condemned  by  her  husband  to  be 
burnt  alive,  but  is  rescued  by  Lancelot  after  much 
bloodshed;  and  the  great  war  begins  in  which  the 
whole  Table  Round  is  dissolved.  Lancelot  surrenders 
the  Queen  to  King  Arthur,  who  takes  her  back  as 
Menelaus  took  Helen  back  to  Lacedsenion ;  there  is  the 
same  sentiment  of  a  woman's  comparative  irresponsi- 
bility when  fierce  warriors  are  contending  for  her ;  and 
Guinevere  does  not  become  a  nun  until  Arthur  has 


106  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

been  slain  in  the  last  battle.  The  sympathy  of  the 
chronicle  is  entirely  with  Guinevere  — 

"  Therefore,  all  ye  that  be  lovers,  call  into  your  remem- 
brance the  moneth  of  May,  as  did  Queen  Guinevere,  for 
whom  I  make  here  a  little  mention,  that  while  she  loved  she 
was  a  true  lover,  and  therefore  she  had  a  good  end." 

She  is  here  the  persistent  type  of  the  fatal  woman 
who  brings  about  a  hero's  death,  the  legendary  cause  of 
wars,  assassinations,  and  the  loss  of  kingdoms,  as  she 
is  still  the  cause  of  bloodsheds  and  revengeful  murders 
among  warlike  tribes ;  her  misconduct  is  now  in  civil- 
ised society  no  more  than  a  private  misfortune,  it  was 
formerly  a  public  calamity.  And  yet  the  old  Celtic 
romance  treats  Guinevere  with  indulgence  and  pity, 
for  it  is  a  tale  of  unhappy  love.  In  Tennyson's  Idyll 
the  tone  and  management  of  the  situation  have  been 
carefully  adjusted  to  the  ethical  sentiment  of  the  pres- 
ent time.  The  King,  when  he  visits  the  Queen  in  the 
nunnery  to  which  she  has  fled,  promises  that  she  shall 
be  protected ;  he  leaves  men 

"To  guard  thee  in  the  wild  hour  coming  on, 
Lest  but  a  hair  of  this  low  head  be  harm'd." 

But  he  will  never  see  her  again  — 

"  I  hold  that  man  the  worst  of  public  foes 
Who  either  for  his  own  or  children's  sake, 
To  save  his  blood  from  scandal,  lets  the  wife 
Whom  he  knows  false,  abide  and  rule  the  house. 
******* 
Better  the  King's  waste  hearth  and  aching  heart 
Than  thou  reseated  in  thy  place  of  light, 
The  mockery  of  my  people,  and  their  bane." 

The  unfortunate  Queen,  left  alone,  pours  out  her  re- 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE   KING  107 

morse  at  having  preferred  an  ardent  lover,  the  flower 
of  chivalry,  to  her  blameless  King,  whom  she  had  once 
found  too  immaculate  — 

"  A  moral  child  without  the  craft  to  rule, 
Else  had  he  not  lost  me. 

******# 
I  thought  I  could  not  breathe  in  that  fine  air, 
That  pure  severity  of  perfect  light. 
I  yearned  for  warmth  and  colour,  which  I  found 
In  Lancelot." 

Thus  in  Tennyson's  poem  we  have  the  faithless  wife 
and  injured  husband  of  our  own  society ;  a  woman's 
agonised  repentance  and  a  man's  stern  justice  that  is 
neither  hard  nor  unforgiving ;  we  have  the  costumes, 
the  scenery,  and  the  dramatis  personce  of  the  old 
romance  with  a  change  of  feeling  and  manners.  The 
result  is,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  excellent  Arthur 
lacks  tragic  quality ;  he  does  not  interest  us  sufficiently ; 
while  there  is  even  something  tame,  from  the  dramatic 
point  of  view,  in  his  high-minded  generosity  toward 
Guinevere.  Secondly,  to  a  mind  prepossessed  with 
the  exactitude  of  modern  taste,  the  scene  between  the 
King  and  Queen  at  Amesbury,  notwithstanding  its 
elevation  of  tone  and  austere  purity  of  feeling,  sug- 
gests something  like  a  splendid  anachronism,  though 
as  a  moral  lesson,  nobly  delivered,  it  has  indisputable 
power  and  beauty.  The  poet  is  undoubtedly  entitled 
to  illustrate  universal  truths  by  striking  off  a  new  and 
powerful  impression  from  the  unchanging  types  of 
human  character ;  yet  those  who  have  no  great  skill  at 
deciphering  the  Hyponoia,  the  underlying  significance 
of  the  Idylls,  may  be  pardoned  for  confessing  to  a 
feeling  of  something  remote,  shadowy,  and  spectacular 


103  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  the  company  of  these  mediaeval  knights  and  dames, 
wizards  and  wantons,  who  pass  over  the  stage  and  per- 
form their  parts  before  an  audience  whose  deeper 
thoughts  have  long  ceased  to  run  in  the  vein  of  fantas- 
tic allegory.  The  unreality  of  the  whole  environment 
inevitably  diminishes  the  dramatic  effect. 

The  story  of  Tristram  and  La  Belle  Iseult,1  which  is 
perhaps  the  most  beautifully  pathetic  in  the  whole 
cycle  of  Romance,  stirring  all  hearts  with  sympathy 
for  irresistible  ill-fated  passion,  is  left  half  told  in 
Malory's  Morte  d' Arthur,  though  Lancelot  alludes  to 
Tristram's  treacherous  murder  by  King  Mark.  Nor 
has  Tennyson,  in  his  Idyll  of  the  Last  Tournament, 
availed  himself  of  the  supremely  poetical  ending  of 
the  old  legend,  when  Tristram,  mortally  wounded, 
sends  a  messenger  across  the  sea  to  bring  Iseult  of 
Cornwall,  his  first  love,  to  Brittany.  The  returning 
vessel,  when  it  comes  within  sight  from  the  Breton 
shore,  is  to  hoist  a  white  sail  if  it  is  bringing  Iseult,  a 
black  sail  if  she  has  refused  to  come.  But  Iseult  of 
Brittany,  his  wife,  tells  him  falsely  that  the  vessel  has 
been  sighted  with  a  black  sail,  whereupon  Tristram, 
who  had  kept  himself  alive  ["retenait  sa  vie"]  until 
then,  lets  himself  expire ;  and  Iseult  of  Cornwall 
lands  only  to  die  of  grief  over  his  body.  Here  the 
dominant  feeling  is  of  pity  and  pardon  for  broken- 
hearted lovers,  but  in  the  Idyll  of  the  Last  Tourna- 
ment Tristram's  story  has  the  conclusion  of  another 
and  probably  a  later  version,  which  is  sudden  and  vio- 
lent. King  Mark,  Arthur's  antitype,  is  the  suspicious 
and  vindictive  husband,  who  surprises  Tristram  with 
his  wife,  and  kills  him  in  the  arms  of  Iseult ;  there  is 
!0r  "Isoude." 


iv.]  IDYLLS   OF  THE  KING  109 

here  no  allegory  or  romantic  circumstance,  but  the 
sombre  morality  of  a  doom  like  that  of  Francesca  da 
Rimini,  of  lovers  whose  fate  melted  even  the  austerity 
of  Dante.  One  might  wish  that  Tennyson  had  pre- 
ferred the  softer  and  more  compassionate  ending ;  the 
more  so  because  the  story  of  Tristram,  lying  with  fail- 
ing breath  in  his  castle  that  overlooked  the  sea,  and 
receiving  his  death  stroke  from  the  word  brought  him 
of  the  black  sail,  would  have  given  ample  scope  for 
finely  wrought  descriptive  poetry,  and  for  touching  the 
highest  chords  of  emotion.  Yet  the  Idyll  tells  its 
own  story  forcibly,  without  effort  or  exaggeration  of 
language;  the  shadow  of  danger  grows  darker  over 
the  amorous  discourse  of  Tristram  and  Iseult  in  her 
bower,  where  the  reckless  passion  of  the  woman  and 
the  kindling  desire  of  the  man  blind  them  to  the 
impending  calamity,  until  their  lips  meet  — 

"  But,  while  he  bow'd  to  kiss  the  jewell'd  throat, 
Out  of  the  dark,  just  as  the  lips  had  touch'd, 
Behind  him  rose  a  shadow  and  a  shriek  — 
'  Mark's  way,'  said  Mark,  and  clove  him  through  the  brain." 

The  poem  has  several  examples  of  Tennyson's  singular 
skill  in  briefly  sketching  broad  landscapes  — 

"But  Arthur  with  a  hundred  spears 
Kode  far,  till  o'er  the  illimitable  reed, 
And  many  a  glancing  plash  and  sallowy  isle, 
The  wide-wing' d  sunset  of  the  misty  marsh 
Glared  on  a  huge  machicolated  tower." 
Again  — 

"  As  the  crest  of  some  slow-arching  wave, 
Heard  in  dead  night  along  that  table-shore, 
Drops  flat,  and  after  the  great  waters  break 
Whitening  for  half  a  league,  and  thin  themselves, 
Far  over  sands  marbled  with  moon  and  cloud." 


110  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Or  a  single  line  may  be  the  setting  of  a  picture,  as  in 
"  The  long  low  dune  and  lazy  plunging  sea." 

And  in  the  Passing  of  Arthur,  when  the  King  is 
following  Modred  to  the  down  by  the  seaside,  where 
he  is  to  fight  the  last  "  dim  weird  battle  of  the  west/' 
the  poet  again  shows  his  power  of  fixing  by  a  few 
strokes  the  impression  of  a  desolate  wilderness  bounded 
by  the  sky-lines  of  mountain  and  sea. 

' '  Then  rose  the  King  and  moved  his  host  by  night, 
And  ever  push'd  Sir  Modred,  league  by  league, 
Back  to  the  sunset  bound  of  Lyonnesse  — 
A  land  of  old  upheaven  from  the  abyss 
By  fire,  to  sink  into  the  abyss  again  ; 
Where  fragments  of  forgotten  peoples  dwelt, 
And  the  long  mountains  ended  in  a  coast 
Of  ever-shifting  sand,  and  far  away 
The  phantom  circle  of  a  moaning  sea." 

In  this  Idyll,  the  last  of  the  series,  we  have  Tennyson's 
Morte  d' Arthur  fragment  of  1842,  reproduced  with 
additions  at  the  beginning  and  the  end  to  carry  on  and 
wind  up  the  epical  narrative,  and  to  point  the  moral 
intention.  The  fantastic  folklore  no  longer  discon- 
certs us,  the  final  Act  of  the  drama  is  purely  heroic. 
We  have  a  clear  view  of  a  noble  ruler  of  his  people, 
born  out  of  his  due  time,  who  after  striving  to  realise 
a  lofty  ideal  of  justice  and  humanity  in  a  wild  age, 
finds  the  whole  fabric  of  his  State  ruined  by  domestic 
perfidy  and  armed  rebellion,  and  marches  full  of  doubt 
and  despondency  to  the  battle  in  which  he  is  to  fall 
and  to  disappear  mysteriously. 

"For  I,  being  simple,  thought  to  work  His  will, 
And  have  but  stricken  with  the  sword  in  vain  ; 


iv.]  IDYLLS  OF  THE   KING  111 

And  all  whereon  I  lean'd  in  wife  and  friend 
Is  traitor  to  my  peace,  and  all  my  realm 
Reels  back  into  the  beast,  and  is  no  more. 
My  God,  Thou  hast  forgotten  me  in  my  death : 
Nay  —  God  my  Christ  —  I  pass  but  shall  not  die." 

The  two  armies  meet,  shrouded  in  a  white  mist  by  the 
seashore,  in  a  stubborn  fight,  until 

"  When  the  dolorous  day 
Grew  drearier  toward  twilight  falling,  came 
A  bitter  wind,  clear  from  the  North,  and  blew 
The  mist  aside,  and  with  that  wind  the  tide 
Rose,  and  the  pale  King  glanced  across  the  field 
Of  battle  :  but  no  man  was  moving  there." 

He  sees  Modred,  kills  him  with  one  last  stroke,  and 
falls  all  but  slain.  Then  follows  the  well-known 
episode  of  the  casting  of  his  sword  Excalibur  into  the 
mere,  and  the  appearance  of  the  dusky  barge  with  the 
black-hooded  Queens. 

In  no  other  part  of  the  entire  poern  is  the  magic  of 
the  old  romance  so  finely  interfused  with  allegory  as 
at  the  close  of  this  Idyll,  where  patriotic  courage  and 
virtue  are  seen  contending  vainly  against  the  powers 
of  evil,  against  that  adverse  Fate,  otherwise  inexorable 
Circumstance,  which  is  too  strong  for  human  endeavour, 
and  shapes  man's  visible  destiny.  Just  as  neither 
valour,  nor  unflinching  devotion  to  his  city,  nor  nobility 
of  character,  could  save  Hector  from  death,  or  An- 
dromache from  bitter  servitude,  so  against  Arthur  the 
hard  facts  of  life  must  prevail,  and  he  perishes  with  all 
his  knights  save  one.  His  enchanted  sword,  the 
emblem  of  personal  prowess,  is  thrown  back  to  the 
water  fairy  as  a  sign  that  his  warfare  is  ended ;  and 


112  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

the  three  Queens  with  whom  he  sails  away  to  the 
island-valley  of  Avilion  may  be,  to  those  who  seek  for 
an  inner  meaning,  symbolical  of  the  angels  who  bear 
away  to  heaven  the  soul  of  a  brave  warrior.  One  may 
well  believe  that  the  Morte  d' Arthur  legend  is,  like  the 
Chanson  de  Roland,  the  far-descended  survival  of  a 
genuine  tradition  of  some  ancient  battle,  in  which  a 
renowned  chief  was  defeated  and  slain  with  the  flower 
of  his  fighting  men.  Roland,  like  Arthur,  survives  to 
the  last ;  his  dying  effort  is  to  break  his  sword  Duran- 
dal,  as  Arthur's  is  to  have  Excalibur  flung  into  the 
lake.  But  Durandal  will  not  break,  for  there  are  holy 
relics  in  the  hollow  of  the  hilt ;  Roland  confesses  his 
sins,  commends  himself  to  God,  and  St.  Michael  and 
St.  Gabriel  take  charge  of  his  soul.  "We  are  here 
in  the  full  atmosphere  of  Christian  piety  and  the 
mediaeval  Church,  uncoloured  by  that  free  myth-mak- 
ing imagination,  the  primitive  semi-pagan  element, 
which  Tennyson  has  retained  to  give  its  charm  and 
glamour  to  his  verse.  His  poem  closes,  epically,  with 
the  vanishing  of  Arthur ;  though  the  prose  chronicle 
goes  on  to  relate  how  Lancelot  bade  farewell  to  Guine- 
vere in  her  cloister,  followed  her  funeral  to  G-laston- 
bury,  died  there  of  grief  at  her  tomb,  and  was  buried 
in  his  castle  of  Joyous  Garde,  where  Sir  Ector  finds 
men  singing  the  dirge  over  him  "full  lamentably." 
There  was  good  matter  here  for  another  Idyll,  but  the 
sequel  might  have  disturbed  the  unity  of  Tennyson's 
plan ;  and  moreover  the  doleful  complaint  of  Sir  Ector 
over  Lancelot's  body,  with  its  piercing  simplicity  of 
words  and  feeling,  rises  so  nearly  to  the  highest  level 
of  heroic  poetry  —  of  such  passages  as  Helen's  lament 
over  Hector's  corpse  in  the  Iliad  —  that  even  Tenny- 


iv.]  ENOCH  AKDEN  113 

son's  art  could  hardly  have  paraphrased  it  success- 
fully. 

If,  after  reading  through  the  Idylls,  we  take  up 
Enoch  Arden,  which  followed  them  in  1864,  the  con- 
trast of  style  and  subject  is  again  remarkable.  This 
poem  begins  by  the  sketch  of  a  little  seaport  on  the 
East  Anglian  coast,  with  the  nets,  old  boats,  and  ship 
timber  strewed  about  the  shore,  and  it  winds  on 
through  the  tale  of  a  fisherman's  homely  joys  and 
griefs,  reminding  us  of  Crabbe,  without  the  quality 
of  hard  pathos  which  Tennyson  found  in  him ;  for  the 
tone  is  softer  and  there  are  more  gleams  of  colour. 
Moreover,  although  the  poet  has  done  his  best  to 
lower  the  pitch  of  his  instrument  into  harmony  with 
a  quiet  unadorned  narrative,  yet  he  cannot  refrain 
here  and  there  from  some  effort  in  describing  common 
things  poetically.  With  Crabbe,  a  full  fish-basket 
would  not  have  been  "  ocean  spoil  in  ocean-smelling 
osier " ;  nor  would  Enoch's  face  have  been  "  rough- 
reddened  with  a  thousand  winter  gales/'  when  a 
hundred  might  have  been  overmuch  for  a  sailor  not 
thirty  years  old  by  the  story.  Nevertheless  the 
opening  lines  have  the  concise  plain-speaking  of  the 
Suffolk  poet,  with  the  same  method  of  grouping  details 
in  the  foreground  of  a  picture ;  and  with  the  difference 
that  Tennyson  widens  his  prospect,  giving  it  distance 
and  air  by  a  sky-line  — 

"Long  lines  of  cliff  breaking  have  left  a  chasm  ; 
And  in  the  chasm  are  foam  and  yellow  sands ; 
Beyond,  red  roofs  about  a  narrow  wharf 
In  cluster ;  then  a  moulder'd  church  ;  and  higher 
A  long  street  climbs  to  one  tall-tower'd  mill ; 
i 


314  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

And  high  in  heaven  behind  it  a  gray  down 
With  Danish  barrows.  .  .  . 

******* 

Here  on  this  beach  a  hundred  years  ago, 
Three  children  of  three  houses,  Annie  Lee, 
The  prettiest  little  damsel  in  the  port, 
And  Philip  Ray  the  miller's  only  son, 
And  Enoch  Arden,  a  rough  sailor's  lad 
Made  orphan  by  a  winter  shipwreck,  play'd 
Among  the  waste  and  lumber  of  the  shore, 
Hard  coils  of  cordage,  swarthy  fishing-nets, 
Anchors  of  rusty  fluke,  and  boats  updrawn." 

Enoch  Arden  marries,  but  is  forced  by  stress  of 
poverty  to  leave  his  wife  and  home  on  a  distant 
voyage.  It  is  when  the  sailor,  escaping  from  ship- 
wreck, lands  alone  on  a  tropical  island,  that  the  scene 
begins  to  glow,  and  the  verses  to  fill  with  sound  — 

"  He  could  not  see  the  kindly  human  face, 
Nor  ever  hear  a  kindly  voice,  but  heard 
The  myriad  shriek  of  wheeling  ocean-fowl, 
The  league-long  roller  thundering  on  the  reef, 
The  moving  whisper  of  huge  trees  that  branch'd 
And  blossom'd  in  the  zenith." 

And  while  he  wanders  under  the  glare  of  unclouded 
noonday  amid  palms  and  ferns,  in  the  glittering  heat 
of  land  and  water,  his  mind's  eye  sees  his  English 
home  far  away  — 

"The  chill 

November  dawns  and  dewy-glooming  downs, 
The  gentle  shower,  the  smell  of  dying  leaves, 
And  the  low  moan  of  leaden-colour 'd  seas." 

The  tale  is  founded  on  an  incident  that  must  have 
been  common  enough  in  the  foretime,  particularly 
among  seafaring  people,  when  men  wandered  abroad 
and  were  lost,  or  found  their  way  home  after  many 


iv.]  ENOCH   ARDEN  115 

years,  to  be  welcomed  or  disowned  by  their  families 
as  the  case  might  be.  It  is  the  Odyssey  of  humble 
mariners,  and  many  traces  of  it  may  be  found  in 
the  folklore  and  in  the  superstitions  of  Asia  as  well 
as  of  Europe,  where  the  forgotten  husband  is  liable 
to  be  treated  on  his  reappearance  as  a  ghostly  revenant, 
or  even  as  a  demon  who  has  assumed  a  dead  man's 
body  in  order  to  gain  entrance  into  the  house.  In 
most  of  these  stories,  as  in  a  rude  English  sea  ballad 
that  used  to  be  well  known,  and  in  an  old  French 
song  of  the  Breton  coast,  the  Penelope  of  a  small  house- 
hold has  yielded  to  her  suitors  and  married  again  as 
in  Enoch  Arden,  and  as  in  Crabbe's  Tale  of  the  Parting 
Hour,  where  the  castaway  mariner  comes  back  to  find 
his  sweetheart  an  elderly  widow.  But  in  the  ancient 
epic  and  also  in  these  folk-tales  the  next  step  is  for 
the  husband  to  declare  his  identity  and  to  demand  his 
rights  most  vigorously,  as  Ulysses  did,  but  as  Enoch 
Arden  does  not.  The  popular  ending,  founded  prob- 
ably on  real  life,  is  that  the  man  who  has  been  sup- 
planted in  his  absence  finally  accepts  the  situation 
and  retires  disconsolately,  or,  as  in  the  novel  of  Gil 
Bias,  philosophically.  Tennyson  has  preferred,  rightly 
for  the  purpose  of  his  art,  a  conclusion  of  pathetic 
self-sacrifice ;  and  Enoch,  after  one  sight  of  his  wife 
and  children  in  a  cheerful  home,  which  is  tenderly 
described,  accepts  oblivion,  and  resolves  that  they 
shall  never  discover  him  alive  — 

"  But  if  my  children  care  to  see  me  dead, 
Who  hardly  knew  me  living,  let  them  come, 
I  am  their  father  ;  but  she  must  not  come, 
For  my  dead  face  would  vex  her  after-life." 

The  poem  has  been  dramatised  in  London  and  Xovr 


116  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

York,  was  translated  into  Latin,  and  into  seven 
different  European  languages ;  while  in  France  alone 
seven  translations,  most  of  them  annotated,  have 
been  made;  and  Professor  A.  Beljarne  of  the  Paris 
University  has  written  a  most  able  study  of  the 
versification  in  Enoch  Arden.  It  is  indeed  an  ex- 
cellent piece  of  work,  which  for  sincerity  of  feeling, 
distinctness  of  outline,  and  restraint  in  language,  may 
be  matched  with  the  poem  of  Dora;  while  by  com- 
paring it  with  Aylmer's  Field,  that  appeared  in  the 
same  volume,  we  can  take  a  measure  both  of  Tennyson's 
strength  and  of  his  imperfections  in  the  delineation  of 
contemporary  life,  outside  the  field  of  romance. 

The  story  in  Aylmer's  Field  runs  upon  the  same 
theme  as  in  Maude  and  Locksley  Hall,  with  a  variation 
of  plot  and  circumstance.  It  reproduces  the  some- 
what commonplace  situation  of  two  playmates,  boy 
and  girl,  who  fall  in  love  with  each  other  on  reaching 
the  age  of  indiscretion,  whereupon  the  rich  and  haughty 
squire  indignantly  ejects  the  young  man,  breaking  off 
the  engagement,  and  breaking  his  daughter's  heart  in 
consequence.  The  lover  kills  himself,  and  his  brother, 
the  parish  clergyman,  takes  the  whole  miserable  affair 
as  his  text  for  a  sermon  that  denounces  the  idols  of 
wealth  and  pedigree,  and  shows  God's  punishment  upon 
worldly  pride.  It  might  be  wished  that  Tennyson, 
whose  special  talent  did  not  lie  in  wielding  the  scourge, 
should  have  perceived  that  extreme  condemnation  of 
this  particular  kind  of  social  injustice  is  liable  to  take 
a  false  air  of  sentiment  which  embarrasses  the  impres- 
sive treatment  of  the  situation  in  poetry. 

"  Sir  Aylmer  Aylmer,  that  almighty  man, 
The  county  God," 


iv.]  AYLMER'S  FIELD  117 

is  too  conventional  a  figure,  obviously  magnified,  and 
has  served  too  long  under  novel-writers,  to  be  pro- 
moted into  the  upper  rank  of  poetical  characters ;  and 
it  is  ineffectual  to  write  him  down  "  insolent,  brainless, 
heartless  ...  an  old  pheasant  lord  and  partridge 
breeder,"  for  the  lash  falls  in  vain  on  the  back  of  a 
callous  society,  to  whom  worldly  considerations  for  Sir 
Aylmer's  motives,  if  not  for  his  manners,  appeal  with 
some  extenuating  force ;  and  who  might  rejoin  that 
the  Lord  of  Burleigh's  marriage  with  a  lowly  maiden 
turned  out  unhappily.  Nor  is  the  morality  of  the 
story  indisputable.  Is  Sir  Aylmer's  iniquity  so  deep 
as  to  justify  a  poet  in  bringing  down  the  wrath  of  God 
upon  his  head,  desolation  upon  his  house,  the  dilapida- 
tion of  his  ancient  hall,  and  the  extinction  of  his 
family  ? 

' '  The  man  became 

Imbecile  ;  his  one  word  was  '  desolate ' ; 
Dead  for  two  years  before  his  death  was  he  : 

******* 
Then  the  great  Hall  was  wholly  broken  down, 
And  the  broad  woodland  parcell'd  into  farms  ; 
And  where  the  two  contrived  their  daughter's  good, 
Lies  the  hawk's  cast,  the  mole  has  made  his  run, 

******* 
The  slow-worm  creeps,  and  the  thin  weasel  there 
Follows  the  mouse,  and  all  is  open  field." 

Purse-pride  and  the  infatuation  of  social  prejudice  are 
not  sins  dark  enough  for  such  a  tremendous  Nemesis ; 
they  fall  rather  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  con- 
temptuous satirist,  who  can  sometimes  hit  the  mark 
iu  one  cutting  sentence,  as  when  Swift  says  that  you 
can  tell  what  God  thinks  of  wealth  by  noticing  the 
kind  of  people  on  whom  He  thinks  fit  to  bestow  it. 


CHAPTER  V 

PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY 

LET  us  turn  to  another  aspect  of  English  life ;  for,  if 
his  studies  from  the  antique  be  excepted,  no  great 
English  poet  has  travelled  for  his  subjects  more  rarely 
beyond  his  native  land  than  Tennyson.  In  such  poems 
of  rural  scenery  and  character  as  The  May  Queen  and 
The  Grandmother,  we  have  the  annals  of  the  village, 
in  youth  and  age,  told  with  a  sweet  and  serious  feel- 
ing, in  flowing  monosyllabic  lines  that  affect  and  cap- 
tivate a  reader  by  their  freedom  from  varnishing  or 
emphasis.  Their  composition  has  not  the  unconscious 
simplicity  of  Auld  Eobin  Gray,  where  the  resemblance 
to  a  genuine  ballad  comes  from  that  absence  of  colour- 
ing adjectives  [there  is  but  one  in  all  the  eight  stanzas] 
which  is  the  note  of  all  primitive  and  popular  verse 
• — a  woodnote  wild  that  is  very  seldom  caiight  and 
domesticated  by  elaborate  culture.  Tennyson's  genius 
was  essentially  cultivated  and  picturesque ;  he  laid  on 
his  tints  with  the  artistic  design  of  illuminating  the 
beauty  of  quiet  nature,  or  he  filled  in  with  descrip- 
tive particulars  in  order  to  produce  the  scene's  general 
impression,  as  in  the  following  stanza :  — 

"When  the  flowers  come  again,  mother,  beneath  the  waning 

light 

You'll  never  see  me  more  in  the  long  gray  fields  at  night ; 
118 


CHAP,  v.]    PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY  119 

When  from  the  dry  dark  wold  the  summer  airs  blow  cool 
On  the  oat-grass  and  the  sword-grass,  and  the  bulrush  in  the 
pool," 

which  is  in  a  style  quite  different  from  that  of  un- 
lettered verse-makers. 

Yet  the  plaintive  lament  of  the  May  Queen  for  her 
doom  of  early  death,  and  the  sadness  of  old  age  recall- 
ing the  memories  of  youth,  are  presented  with  a  truth 
and  earnestness  that  touch  universal  human  affections 
and  the  sense  of  mortality ;  and  the  language  is  purely 
poetical,  with  the  same  exclusion  of  dialect  or  imita- 
tion of  rustic  talk  that  is  seen  in  all  Wordsworth's 
pastorals.  These  poems  of  Tennyson  aim  at,  and  do 
not  fall  far  short  of,  the  "  simplicity  of  diction  "  which 
Wordsworth  affirmed  that  he  had  introduced  into  Eng- 
lish verse  as  the  proper  medium  for  rendering  the 
elementary  feelings  of  the  country-folk  and  showing 
the  poetical  aspect  of  common  things.  Wordsworth's 
principle,  as  explained  in  his  Preface  to  the  Lyrical 
Ballads,  was  to  choose  incidents  and  situations  of  rural 
life,  and  to  describe  them  as  far  as  possible  in  the  lan- 
guage really  used  by  the  people,  purified,  indeed,  from 
grossness  and  uncouth  provincialisms.  Good  prose, 
he  maintained,  Avas  the  proper  vehicle  for  this  kind  of 
poetry:  his  object  was  to  clothe  the  thoughts  and 
characters  in  plain  close-fitting  words,  adapting  the 
speech  to  the  situation.  It  was  not  difficult  for  Cole- 
ridge to  prove,  in  the  well-known  criticism  that  is  to 
be  found  in  his  Biographia  Literaria,  that  language  so 
purified  was  very  different  from  the  true  vulgar  tongue ; 
that  Wordsworth,  in  fact,  used  good  plain  English  vivi- 
fied and  elevated  poetically,  and  was  at  his  worst  in 
the  lines  which  come  nearest  to  commonplace  rustic 


120  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

conversation.  Moreover,  Wordsworth,  though  he  did 
good  service  in  discarding  finally  the  old  conventional 
pastoral,  diverged  habitually  into  philosophic  reflec- 
tions that  were  manifestly  and  intentionally  out  of 
keeping  with  his  rustic  characters.  In  the  two  poems 
of  The  May  Queen  and  The  Grandmother  Tennyson 
makes  no  pretence  of  imitating  the  language  of  his 
villagers ;  his  object  is  to  translate  their  genuine  feel- 
ings poetically ;  he  simplifies  his  diction  and  strips  it 
of  superfluous  ornament ;  but  no  man  knew  better  that 
real  idiomatic  vernacular  is  a  very  different  thing. 
What  this  is,  and  the  use  that  can  be  made  of  it,  he 
has  shown  separately.  He  does  not  relate  a  story  and 
moralise  upon  it,  as  Wordsworth  usually  did;  he 
exhibits  dramatic  impersonations  that  portray  the 
homely  joys  and  griefs  of  the  peasantry,  that  show 
how  they  act  and  what  they  say,  in  language  that  is 
nevertheless  refined,  correct,  and  vivid,  and  in  a  style 
which  is  the  poet's  own. 

It  will  perhaps  be  admitted  that  this  method  of 
leaving  his  personages  to  speak  for  themselves  was  a 
novelty  in  the  lyrics  of  rusticity.  In  subsequent  poems 
Tennyson  went  one  step  further  in  compliance  with  the 
modern  demand  for  what  is  called  realism,  by  trying 
the  bold  experiment,  upon  which  neither  Wordsworth 
nor  even  Crabbe  ever  ventured,  of  making  them  speak 
in  their  own  rough  unpolished  vernacular,  as  if  they 
were  acting  their  parts  on  a  stage.  This  was  the  final 
death-blow  to  the  tradition  of  the  elegant  pastoral. 
We  have  to  remember  that  Burns  was  the  first  poet  of 
genius  who  proved  that  the  strenuous  racy  speech  of 
the  people  contained  elements  of  high  poetic  value, 
being  of  course  led  to  the  discovery  by  the  fact  that  it 


v.]         PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         121 

lay  ready  to  his  hand,  for  he  himself  was  a  poet  born 
and  bred  up  among  the  Scottish  peasantry.  In  Scot- 
land, as  in  the  New  England  of  America,  there  existed 
a  true  and  widespread  provincial  dialect,  which  gave 
a  national  flavour  and  local  associations  to  verses  in 
which  it  was  used;  but  in  England,  the  home  of 
ancient  literary  culture,  the  writing  of  verse  in  dialect 
or  patois  had  never  hitherto  been  attempted  by  any  of 
the  recognised  poets  (and  they  are  numerous)  who 
have  condescended  to  the  short  and  simple  annals  of 
the  village.1  That  Tennyson,  the  mystical  romancer, 
the  dreamer  of  fair  women,  should  also  have  written 
spirited  verses  full  of  rude  and  quaint  humour,  some- 
times even  too  redolent  of  the  soil,  is  a  notable  exam- 
ple of  his  versatility.  And  his  Northern  Farmer  set 
the  fashion,  in  England,  of  drawing  character-sketches 
in  rough-hewn  verse  that  imitates  not  only  the  speech 
but  the  accent  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  unsophis- 
ticated men.  It  is  a  form  of  metrical  composition 
that  has  lately  spread,  as  a  species  of  modern  ballad, 
throughout  the  British  Empire  and  the  United  States 
of  America,  but  has  little  or  no  existence  in  any 
language  except  the  English.2 

FitzGerald,  after  reading  the  "  Holy  Grail,"  writes 
(1870)  to  Tennyson  — 

"The  whole  myth  of  Arthur's  Round  Table  Dynasty  in 
Britain  presents  itself  before  me  with  a  sort  of  cloudy,  Stone- 
henge  grandeur.  I  am  not  sure  if  the  old  Knight's  adventures 

1  William  Barnes,  who  first  published  his  poems  in  the  Dorset- 
shire dialect  in   1833,  can   hardly  he  ranked  among  the  higher 
poets. 

2  Such  poems  as  those  of  Mistral  in  the  Provencal  dialect  belong, 
I  think,  to  a  different  order. 


122  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

do  not  tell  upon  me  better,  touched  in  some  lyrical  way  (like 
your  own  '  Lady  of  Shalott '),  than  when  elaborated  into  epic 
form.  .  .  .  Anyhow,  Alfred,  while  I  feel  how  pure,  noble, 
and  holy  your  work  is,  and  whole  phrases,  lines,  and  sentences 
of  it  will  abide  with  me,  and,  I  am  sure,  with  men  after  me, 
I  read  on  till  the  '  Lincolnshire  Farmer '  drew  tears  to  my 
eyes.  I  was  got  back  to  the  substantial  rough-spun  Nature 
I  knew ;  and  the  old  brute,  invested  by  you  with  the  solemn 
humour  of  Humanity,  like  Shakespeare's  Shallow,  became 
a  more  pathetic  phenomenon  than  the  knights  who  revisit 
the  world  in  your  other  verse." 

In  the  two  poems  of  the  Northern  Farmer,  indeed, 
we  have  verisimilitude  of  portraiture  and  authentic 
delineation  of  character,  preserving  the  type  and  de- 
veloping its  peculiar  features  by  the  insight  that 
belongs  to  the  observing  faculty,  with  artistic  fidel- 
ity in  details.  Yet  the  treatment  of  these  subjects 
needs  much  discrimination  and  reserve;  for  unless 
there  is  a  solid  foundation  of  point  and  humour,  the 
dialect  becomes  mere  jargon ;  and  the  particulars  must 
never  be  too  inelegant,  nor  must  the  verse  be  over- 
crowded with  phonetic  pronunciations.  The  Northern 
Cobbler,  which  betrays  defects  of  this  kind,  must  be 
ranked,  critically,  below  the  Farmer ;  and  the  Village 
Wife  has  a  certain  triviality  of  voluble  talk  which  may 
be  true  enough  to  nature,  but  hardly  supports  her  claim 
to  a  niche  in  a  poetic  gallery  of  national  portraits. 

" 'Ouse-keeper  sent  tha,  my  lass,  fur  New  Squire  coom'd  last 

night. 
Butter  an'   heggs  —  yis  —  yis.     I'll  goa  wi'    tha  back  ;    all 

right ; 
Butter  I  warrants  be  prime,  an'  I  warrants  the  hegga  be  as 

well, 
Hafe  a  pint  o'  milk  runs  out  when  ya  breaks  the  shell." 


v.]         PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         123 

Take  away  the  queer  spelling,  and  turn  the  lines  into 
ordinary  English,  and  you  have  commonplace  domestic 
prose  hardly  worth  putting  into  rhyme.  By  the  same 
test  The  Spinster's  Sweet-' Arts  must  be  reckoned 
among  the  less  successful  excursions  into  the  field  of 
low  life,  for  even  there  it  is  dangerous  to  descend 
among  ignoble  particulars,  and  the  Art  of  Sinking 
consists  in  avoiding  degradation  — 

"  To  be  horder'd  about,  an'  waaked,  when  Molly'd  put  out  the 

light, 
By  a  man   coomin'   in  \vi'   a  hiccup  at  ony  hour  o'   the 

night ! 
An'  the  taable  staain'd  wi'  'is  aale,  an'  the  mud  o'  'is  boots 

o'  the  stairs, 
An'  the  stink  o'  'is  pipe  i'  the  'ouse,  an'  the  mark  o'  'is  'ead 

o'  the  chairs  !  " 

"  Eoden  Noel,"  writes  Tennyson,  "  calls  the  two 
Northern  Farmers  photography ;  but  I  call  them 
imaginative"  —  as  of  course  they  are,  being  far  above 
mere  exact  presentations  of  individuals.  And  in  pro- 
portion as  photography,  the  bare  indifferent  printing 
off  of  things  as  they  are,  predominates  in  this  kind  of 
work,  it  becomes  no  fit  business  for  a  master  of  poeti- 
cal grace  and  distinction.  Here,  again,  we  may  refer  to 
Coleridge's  criticism  on  Wordsworth's  Preface,  where 
he  (Wordsworth)  explains  that  he  has  chosen  low  and 
rustic  subjects,  because  in  that  condition  the  essential 
passions  of  the  heart  are  less  under  restraint,  and 
speak  a  plainer  and  more  emphatic  language.  To  this 
Coleridge  replies  that  low  and  rustic  life  is  in  itself 
unpoetic,  and  that  poetry  must  idealise.  Where 
Wordsworth  does  idealise,  he  says,  his  figures  have 
the  representative  quality;  where  the  poet  goes  too 


124  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

close  to  the  real  native  product,  as  in  the  "  Idiot  Boy," 
he  becomes  commonplace  ;  and  when  he  describes  a 
dull  and  garrulous  man  exactly,  he  becomes  himself 
dull.  So,  also,  when  Tennyson  gives  iis  the  vulgar 
tongue  in  its  full  flavour,  the  poetical  element  is  over- 
powered and  disappears. 

But  if  it  must  be  admitted  that  passages  like  these 
are  blemishes  on  the  picture,  "in  truth  to  nature 
missing  truth  to  art,"  we  may  regard  them  as  an 
overbalance  of  Tennyson's  proclivities,  as  lapses  on 
the  side  to  which  his  genius  leans.  Throughout  his 
poetry,  from  the  highest  to  the  humblest  subject, 
runs  a  vivid  objectivity ;  he  sees  things  in  strong 
relief,  and  they  are  impressed  with  a  sharp  edge 
upon  a  very  receptive  mind.  Even  at  the  times  when 
he  is  dropping  his  plummet  into  the  abyss  of  the 
mysteries  that  encompass  human  existence  and  des- 
tiny, he  rarely  carries  abstract  thought  to  any  depth ; 
he  returns  to  the  surface  and  refreshes  himself  among 
the  forms  of  the  visible  world.  Here  he  is  in  his 
proper  domain,  in  his  power  of  exact  delineation, 
of  recording  briefly  the  sensation  received  and  re- 
tained, by  looking  (for  example)  attentively  at  a 
wide  prospect,  and  taking  out  of  it  the  suggestion 
or  the  similitudes,  reading  from  it  the  language  or 
discourse  of  Nature.  And  as  in  his  best  work  he 
takes  accurate  notice  of  minor  things,  of  wild  flowers 
and  foliage,  of  a  weasel's  faint  cry  or  a  bird's  call,  or 
even  of  a  cow's  wrinkled  throat  in  the  play  of  sun- 
light, so  when  he  is  giving  us  the  rough  side  of  life 
he  has  occasionally  fallen  into  excess  of  naturalism 
by  his  propensity  for  minute  observation  of  things 
that  will  not  bear  inspecting  too  closely. 


v.]         PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        126 

Yet  his  pre-eminent  gift  was  for  the  imaginative 
apprehension  of  beauty,  and  his  practice  is  exemplified 
in  the  record  of  his  journeys.  In  1860,  for  example, 
he  made  an  excursion  to  Cornwall  and  the  Scilly 
Islands,  gathering  a  harvest  of  impressions  from  the 
views  of  ,the  coast,  the  cliffs,  the  long  curving  sweep 
of  the  sandy  shore,  the  towering  Atlantic  breakers, 
and  jotting  down  the  "  nature-similes,"  which,  be- 
ing afterwards  grafted  into  his  verse,  became  the 
decorative  framework  that  contained  and  gave  a  local 
habitation  to  his  Arthurian  legends.  Then  he  returned 
to  Farringford,  with  its  careless  ordered  garden  close 
to  the  edge  of  a  noble  down,  where  his  friends  visited 
him,  and  listened  to  his  table  talk,  and  heard  him 
read  his  poems.  In  1861  he  was  in  Auvergne,  sur- 
veying, for  the  most  part  silently,  the  mountains, 
lakes,  and  torrents ;  whence  the  party  travelled  south- 
ward to  the  Pyrenees,  meeting  Arthur  Clough  at 
Luchon,  with  continual  additions  throughout  the 
journey  to  the  poetic  sketch-book.  He  could  thus 
fix  in  a  few  words  the  sensations  of  the  moment, 
fresh  and  distinct,  storing  them  for  eventual  use 
either  descriptively,  as  part  of  a  narrative,  or  as 
metaphors  to  expand  and  give  forms  to  a  thought. 
It  may  be  noticed,  by  the  way,  that  the  most  famous  of 
Tennyson's  contemporary  poets  in  France  worked  by 
precisely  the  same  method.  Victor  Hugo's  "  Couchers 
du  Soleil  "  are  careful  studies  from  nature  of  the  tones 
and  forms  of  a  landscape  under  the  setting  sun.  Both 
these  great  artists  sought  to  fix  accurately  the  scene, 
and  to  translate  the  momentary  sensation  into  accord- 
ance with  the  thought  that  it  awakened,  to  use  it 
as  the  background  or  environment  of  human  action, 


126  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

or  merely  to  obtain  a  fresh  image  for  the  poetic 
embodiment  of  an  idea,  in  substitution  for  images 
that  have  been  worn  out  or  become  obsolete  by 
long  usage.  Metaphor  lies  at  the  base  of  all 
language ;  and  while  the  first  man  who  spoke  of 
running  water  conveyed  his  thought  by  an  image 
which  invested  the  stream  with  a  being  like  his 
own,  the  poets  latterly  resorted  to  metaphor,  or  to 
myth  —  which  is  in  their  hands  metaphor  personi- 
fied—  as  a  mere  repertory  for  figurative  expression. 
"When  the  thought  at  once  strikes  out  the  image, 
it  comes  fresher  from  the  mint  than  when  the  image 
has  been  noted  and  treasured  up  beforehand  for 
illustration  of  thought  or  action.  It  may  be  observed 
that  Tennyson  never  uses  what  may  be  called  the 
mythological  device ;  he  never  appeals  directly  to 
the  ocean  or  the  mountain  as  if  it  were  a  living 
embodiment  of  Nature,  as  Byron  does ;  he  absorbs 
and  translates  the  impress  of  inanimate  things  upon 
the  perceptive  mind.  A  year  later  we  find  him 
making  similar  studies  for  his  poetry  from  the 
crags  and  dismantled  castles  of  Derbyshire  and  York- 
shire. It  would  seeni  that  his  wandering  in  the 
quiet  familiar  scenery  of  England  served  him  best 
in  this  way;  since,  if  we  may  judge  from  a  letter 
written  immediately  after  his  return  from  abroad, 
his  reminiscences  of  a  journey  through  France  were 
troubled  by  a  kind  of  resentment  against  the  annoy- 
ances that  never  failed  to  discompose  him  in  strange 
lands,  and  which  in  this  instance  appear  to  have 
affected  his  health. 

"France,  I  believe,  overset  me.  and  more  especially  the 
foul  ways  and  unhappy  diet  of  that  charming  Auvergne ;  no 


v.]        PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        127 

amount  of  granite  craters  or  chestnut-woods,  or  lava-streams, 
not  the  Puy  <le  Dome  which  I  climbed,  nor  the  glen  of  Royat 
where  I  lived,  nor  the  still  more  magnificent  view  of  the  dead 
volcanoes  from  the  ascent  to  Mont  Dore  could  make  amends 
for  those  drawbacks ;  so  we  all  fell  sick  by  turns.  ...  I 
remain  with  a  torpid  liver,  not  having  much  pleasure  in 
anything."  1 

Nevertheless  the  course  and  circumstances  of  Tenny- 
son's middle  life  were  singularly  untroubled  and  un- 
eventful, leaving  few  turning-points  or  landmarks  for 
the  biographer.  From  straitened  means  in  youth  he 
had  now  passed  to  comparative  affluence  and  the  seren- 
ity of  a  well-ordered  home ;  from  distinction  within  a 
circle  of  choice  friends  to  celebrity  and  eminence  among 
the  poets  of  his  century.  At  Farringford,  though  his 
hours  of  work  and  meditation  were  properly  set  apart, 
his  life  was  by  no  means  secluded.  He  had  many 
visitors  and  guests  to  whom  he  dispensed  hospitality, 
and  with  them  held  the  free  discourse  and  interchange 
of  ideas  that  reveal  a  man's  character  and  opinions. 
His  natural  disposition  was  toward  reserve  and  toward 
a  certain  taciturnity,  that  probably  came  from  the 
habit  of  reflection  and  of  fastidiousness  in  the  choice 
of  phrase ;  he  spoke  with  intervals  of  silence. 

After  this  manner  the  record  of  Tennyson's  life  runs 
in  a  dignified  tranquillity,  varied  only  by  incidents  that 
attest  his  established  and  spreading  reputation  as  an 
illustrious  man  of  letters,  known  by  all  Englishmen, 
and  whose  acquaintance  was  desired  by  distinguished 
foreign  visitors  to  his  country.  In  1864  he  received 
at  Farringford  Garibaldi,  who  planted  a  tree  in  the 
garden,  and  discoursed  with  him  on  Italian  poetry. 

1  Memoir. 


128  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

He  writes  to  the  Duke  of  Argyll :  "  What  a  noble 
human  being !  I  expected  to  see  a  hero,  and  was  not 
disappointed.  When  I  asked  if  he  returned  through 
France,  he  said  he  would  never  set  foot  on  the  soil  of 
France  again.  I  happened  to  make  use  of  the  expres- 
sion, l  That  fatal  debt  of  gratitude  owed  by  Italy  to 
Napoleon.'  l  Gratitude,'  he  said ;  '  hasn't  he  had  his 
pay,  his  reward  ?  If  Napoleon  were  dead,  I  should  be 
glad ;  and  if  I  were  dead,  he  would  be  glad.' " 1  And 
yet  there  was  prophetic  truth  in  Tennyson's  words, 
though  not  as  he  meant  them;  for  the  debt  proved 
fatal,  not  to  Italy,  but  to  Napoleon,  whose  attachment 
to  the  cause  of  Italian  liberty  drew  him  into  fatal 
complications  that  hampered  all  his  foreign  policy  arid 
contributed  to  his  eventual  downfall.  The  Longfellows 
from  America,  Professor  Owen,  Queen  Emma  of  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  the  son  of  the  Abyssinian  King 
Theodore,  who  lost  life  and  kingdom  in  his  war  with 
the  English,  and  Mr.  Darwin — to  whom  Tennyson 
said,  "Your  theory  of  Evolution  does  not  make  against 
Christianity  ?  "  and  Darwin  answered,  "No,  certainly 
not" — may  be  mentioned  to  exemplify  the  variety  of 
his  visitors.  We  have  a  journal  of  a  tour  to  Waterloo, 
with  a  careful  survey  of  the  battlefield,  and  thence  to 
Weimar,  where  the  party  saw  Goethe's  house,  with  all 
his  old  boots  at  the  entrance,  and  Goethe's  coffin  at 
the  Furstengruft.  Tennyson  joined,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  the  Committee  for  the  defence  of 
Governor  Eyre,  whose  figure  as  the  saviour  of  Jamaica 
struck  the  hardy  temper  of  the  English  people,  bring- 
ing out  their  unfailing  readiness  to  pardon  doing  too 
much  a  great  deal  more  easily  than  doing  too  little  in 
1  Memoir. 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         129 

a  sharp  emergency,  and  to  be  amazingly  indulgent  as 
to  the  methods  employed. 

In  1867  Tennyson  was  in  negotiation  for  the  land 
on  Blackdown  in  Surrey,  where  he  afterwards  built 
Aldworth,  on  a  site  accessible  only  by  a  rough  track 
across  the  sandy  plateau  of  the  down  from  the  lanes 
above  Haslemere;  placing  the  house  on  a  sheltered 
ledge  of  the  uppermost  part  of  the  hill's  slope  south- 
ward, with  a  broad  view  over  the  Sussex  weald  to 
the  South  Downs  and  the  sea,  and  Leith  Hill  standing 
out  on  the  eastern  horizon.  Then  in  1868-69  he 
went  abroad  with  Mr.  Frederick  Locker,  who  has  left 
notes  on  the  philosophic  discourse,  always  so  attractive 
to  Tennyson,  that  throws  many  side-lights  on  his  poetry. 
Some  of  these  reminiscences  show  his  mystical  pro- 
pensity, the  habit  of  ruminating  indecisively  over 
speculations  which  understand  all  visible  things  to  be 
signs  and  shadows  of  things  invisible,  the  intimations 
of  eternal  Power  and  Divinity.1  His  thoughts  also  ran 
upon  the  limited  range  of  our  sense-perceptions,  and 
the  relativity  of  our  ideas  to  our  ignorance,  on  Faith 
transcending  the  bounds  of  Reason,  and  on  his  own  firm 
belief  in  Love,  Virtue,  and  Duty.  His  mind  wavered 
thus  over  the  face  of  the  deep  waters,  returning 
always  to  the  solid  ground  of  human  affections  and 
moral  obligations,  in  accordance  with  the  advice  of 
Socrates,  that  where  certainty  is  unattainable  one 
should  take  the  best  and  most  irrefragable  of  human 
notions,  and  let  this  be  the  raft  upon  which  life's 
voyage  is  to  be  made. 

A  few  lines  may  be  subjoined  from  the  same  notes, 
i  St.  Paul,  Romans  i.  20. 

K 


,30  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

to  show  the  lighter  side  of  Tennyson's  character, 
so  well  known  to  all  who  had  the  privilege  of  his 
acquaintance. 

"Balzac's  remark  that '  Dans  tout  homme  de  ge"nie  il  y  a  un 
enfant,'  may  find  its  illustration  in  Tennyson.  He  is  the  only 
grown-up  human  being  that  I  know  of  who  habitually  thinks 
aloud.  His  humour  is  of  the  dryest,  it  is  admirable.  ...  He 
tells  a  story  excellently,  and  has  a  catching  laugh.  There  are 
people  who  laugh  because  they  are  shy  or  disconcerted,  or  for 
lack  of  ideas  .  .  .  only  a  few  because  they  are  happy  or 
amused,  or  perhaps  triumphant.  Tennyson  has  an  entirely 
natural  and  a  very  kindly  laugh." 1 

It  was,  indeed,  this  vein  of  simplicity,  unsophisticated 
by  conventionality,  that  often  gave  unexpected  turns 
to  his  humour,  while  it  had  much  to  do  with  preserving 
that  keen  sense,  or  even  enjoyment,  of  ludicrous  incon- 
gruities, of  the  comic  effects  of  indecorum  or  uncon- 
scious vulgarity,  which  he  himself  once  noticed  in 
Shakespeare.  If  his  laugh  was  triumphant,  it  was 
from  that  sudden  glory  which  Hobbes  defines  to  be 
the  cause  of  laughter  at  human  imperfections ;  though 
no  one  was  further  above  ill-natured  scorn  than  Tenny- 
son, or  less  prone  to  harsh  judgment  upon  the  ordinary 
follies  and  eccentricities  of  men. 

It  may  be  permissible,  for  the  purpose  of  collating 
the  impressions  made  by  Tennyson  on  those  who  knew 
him  well  and  saw  him  often  about  this  time,  to  add 
here  an  extract  from  some  recollections  of  his  con- 
versation that  have  been  left  by  Mr.  F.  Palgrave  — 

"  Every  one  will  have  seen  men,  distinguished  in  some  line 
of  work,  whose  conversation  (to  take  the  old  figure)  either 
'  smelt  too  strongly  of  the  lamp,'  or  lay  quite  apart  from  their 
art  and  craft.  What,  through  all  these  years,  struck  me  about 
Tennyson,  was  that  whilst  he  never  deviated  into  poetical 
1  Memoir. 


v.]         PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         131 

language  as  such,  whether  in  rhetoric  or  highly-coloured 
phrase,  yet  throughout  the  substance  of  his  talk  the  same 
mode  of  thought,  the  same  imaginative  grasp  of  nature,  the 
same  fineness  and  gentleness  in  his  view  of  character,  the  same 
forbearance  and  toleration,  the  aurea  mediocritas  despised  by 
fools  and  fanatics,  which  are  stamped  on  his  poetry,  were  con- 
stantly perceptible;  whilst  in  the  easy  and,  as  it  were,  unsought 
choiceness,  the  conscientious  and  truth-loving  precision  of  his 
words,  the  same  personal  identity  revealed  itself."1 

Here  we  have  the  large  serenity  of  a  poet  in  whom 
years  are  strengthening  his  philosophy  of  everyday 
life,  while  he  was  constantly  pondering  upon  the  mys- 
teries which  encompass  all  phenomenal  existence. 
In  the  autumn  of  1868,  as  we  learn  from  a  note  pre- 
fixed by  the  editor  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  review  to 
an  article,  Tennyson  and  the  Kev.  Charles  Pritchard 
were  the  guests  of  Mr.  James  Knowles ;  and  as  the 
conversation  had  frequently  turned  on  speculative  sub- 
jects, it  was  suggested  that  a  society  might  be  formed 
uto  discuss  such  questions  after  the  manner  and  with 
the  freedom  of  an  ordinary  scientific  society."  This 
proposal  was  acted  upon,  witb  the  result  that  some  of 
the  leading  representatives  of  theological  opinion, 
scientific  research,  and  philosophic  interest  came  to- 
gether in  the  Metaphysical  Society,  of  which  Mr.  Les- 
lie Stephen  has  observed  that  four  out  of  five  of  its 
members  knew  nothing  of  metaphysics.  We  learn 
from  Mr.  Knowles  that  the  plan  came  first  to  be  set  on 
foot  entirely  through  Tennyson's  adhesion  to  it ;  and 
although  during  the  society's  existence  of  twelve  years 
his  attendance  was  infrequent  —  while  he  usually  lis- 
tened silently  to  the  debates  —  one  may  guess  that  the 
papers  read  or  discussed  on  problems  that  had  always 
1  Memoir. 


132  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

occupied  his  mind  must  have  increased  their  attraction 
for  him,  and  may  have  influenced  the  philosophic  drift 
of  his  subsequent  poetry.  His  poem  on  The  Higher 
Pantheism,  which  he  sent  to  be  read  before  the  Society, 
maintains  the  personality  of  God  apart  from  the  visible 
world,  regarding  spiritual  beings  as  somehow  incom- 
patible with  matter.  The  pure  Pantheistic  idea  is  a 
conception  of  universal  Divine  immanence,  of  the  in- 
finite interpenetrating  the  finite ;  but  this  might  be  held 
to  exclude  the  notion  of  the  world's  moral  government. 
And  Tennyson's  Higher  Pantheism  seems  to  aim  at 
preserving  the  consciousness  of  a  discrimination  be- 
tween infinite  intelligence  and  the  mind,  whose 
perception  of  the  finite  world  involves,  or  perhaps 
necessitates,  a  recognition  of  infinity  beyond  — 

"The  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the  seas,  the  hills  and  the 

plains  — 
Are  not  these,  0  Soul,  the  Vision  of  Him  who  reigns  ? 

******* 
Earth,  these  solid  stars,  this  weight  of  body  and  limb, 
Are  they  not  sign  and  symbol  of  thy  division  from  Him  ?  " 

The  soul  has  broken  glimpses  of  the  Divine  vision ; 
and  the  concluding  lines  — 

"  And  the  ear  of  man  cannot  hear,  and  the  eye  of  man  cannot 

see  ; 
But  if  we  could  see  and  hear,  this  Vision  — were  it  not  He  ?  " 

might  be  interpreted  as  leading  up  to  the  doctrine  of 
Oriental  theosophy  —  that  only  by  escaping  from  sen- 
sation, by  liberation  from  the  bodily  organs,  can  the 
soul  attain  clear  knowledge  of  or  unity  with  the  Divine 
Being. 


v.]        PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY        133 

We  know  from  Tennyson's  earlier  writings  that  a 
shadow  of  despondency  and  glooin,  a  sense  of  the  in- 
completeness and  failures  of  life,  darkened  his  medita- 
tions on  the  condition  and  prospects  of  the  human 
race ;  and  his  later  poems  show  that  he  long  retained 
this  cloudy  outlook  upon  the  world.  In  1864  he  wrote 
an  unpublished  epigram  upon  "Immeasurable  Sad- 
ness " ;  and  if  a  collection  were  made  of  his  dramatic 
monologues  (which  would  be  well  worth  doing),  we 
should  find  that  as  time  went  on  he  dwelt  more  and 
more  on  the  uiihappiness  of  mankind.  In  Locksley 
Hall  and  Maud  we  had  the  vague  dispirited  murmuring 
of  youth  against  the  world's  hard  discipline ;  but  we 
also  had  the  lyrics  of  youthful  ardour,  love,  and  beauty. 
In  the  pastorals  we  have  had  the  quiet  joys  and  sor- 
rows of  the  country  folk.  In  his  latter-day  mono- 
logues the  tragic  view  of  things  appears  to  spread  and 
deepen ;  not  vague  discontent,  but  actual  misery  and 
anguish  are  his  themes ;  the  agony  of  Eizpah ;  the 
remorse,  in  The  Wreck,  of  one  who  deserted  her  hus- 
band and  lost  her  child ;  the  vain  repentance,  in  The 
First  Quarrel,  of  a  widow  who  parted  with  her  husband 
in  foolish  anger  — 

'•  An'  the  wind  began  to  rise,  an'  I  thought  of  him  out  at  sea, 
Au'  I  felt  I  had  been  to  blame  ;  he  was  always  kind  to  me. 
'  Wait  a  little,  my  lass,  I  am  sure  it  'ill  all  come  right'  — 
An'  the  boat  went  down  that  night  —  the  boat  went  down  that 
night." 

The  Children's  Hospital  is  full  of  pain  and  tears; 
while  in  Despair  we  have  the  fury  of  a  man  half 
crazed  by  misfortune,  who  has  been  resuscitated  after 
trying  to  drown  himself.  Instead  of  depicting  a 
mood,  a  reverie,  or  a  type  of  character,  he  now  takes 


134  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

up  a  striking  anecdote  of  actual  crime  or  suffering, 
and  gives  full  play  to  his  keen  sensibility  by  a  dramatic 
impersonation  of  the  strongest  emotions.  The  most 
poignant  situation,  more  powerfully  rendered  than  any 
other,  is  in  Bizpah,  where  a  mother  has  gathered  up 
the  fleshless  bones  of  her  son  who  has  been  hanged  in 
chains  for  a  robbery,  and  she  hears  the  night-wind 
bring  down  his  piteous  cries  to  her :  — 

"  Wailing,  wailing,  wailing,  the  wind  over  land  and  sea  — 
And  Willy's  voice    in  the  wind — 'O    mother,  come    out 

tome.' 
Why  should  he  call  me  to-night,  when  he  knows  that  I  cannot 

go? 
For  the  downs  are  as  bright  as  day,  and  the  full  moon  stares 

at  the  snow. 

' '  We  should  be  seen,  my  dear  ;  they  would  spy  us  out  of  the  town. 
The  loud  black  nights  for  us,  and  the  storm  rushing  over  the 

down, 
When  I  cannot  see  my  own  hand,  but  am  led  by  the  creak  of 

the  chain, 
And  grovel  and  grope  for  my  son  till  I  find  myself  drenched 

with  the  rain." 

It  is  a  cruel  story,  barely  fit  for  poetry,  since  the 
simple  facts  are  so  heartrending  as  to  leave  little  scope 
for  imaginative  execution.  Yet  the  long  moaning  lines 
have  the  sound  of  misery ;  the  details  are  worked  up 
with  unflinching  precision ;  and  the  sensation  of  utter 
grief,  beyond  all  comfort  or  cure,  is  very  forcibly 
conveyed.  For  a  comparison  of  style,  between  the 
elaborate  and  the  primitive,  we  may  turn  to  the  tale 
of  Eizpah,  the  daughter  of  Aiah,  told  in  the  ancient 
chronicle  with  all  the  power  of  a  few  plain  words, 
without  ornament  or  commentary;  a  sight  as  it  was 


v.]        PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        135 

seen  on  the  Syrian  hills,  when  the  seven  sons  of  Saul 
were  hanged  in  propitiation  of  divine  wrath,  to  stay 
the  famine. 

If  we  may  now  endeavour  to  sketch  out  some  general 
view  of  Tennyson's  attitude  toward  the  great  problems 
of  human  existence,  it  becomes  necessary  to  read  to- 
gether, in  this  connection,  the  poems  that  he  published 
at  different  times  in  his  later  years.  In  Tennyson's 
Rizpah  we  have  a  helpless  woman  crushed  by  a  calamity 
that  she  could  not  avert;  our  compassion  for  her  is 
unqualified.  In  Despair,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
a  case  of  mental  pathology ;  we  are  back  again  among 
intellectual  difficulties :  we  have  to  consider  the  ethics 
of  the  situation,  and  to  suspend  our  sympathy  until 
we  can  satisfy  ourselves  that  a  man  deserves  it  who 
would  fling  away  his  own  life  and  his  wife's  because 
he  has  lost  faith  in  God,  is  miserable  in  this  world, 
and  expects  nothing  from  the  world  to  come  :  — 

"He  is  only  a  cloud  and  a  smoke  who  was  once  a  pillar  of 

fire, 
The  guess  of  a  worm  in  the    dust  and  the  shadow  of  its 

desire  — 
Of  a  worm  as  it  writhes  in  a  world  of  the  weak  trodden  down 

by  the  strong, 
Of  a  dying  worm  in  a  world,  all  massacre,   murder,  and 

wrong." 

Here  indeed  we  have  the  lyric  of  despair,  and  the 
force  of  language  has  been  strained  to  its  uttermost 
pitch  in  expressing  it.  Yet  we  are  not  so  carried 
away  by  the  rush  of  the  daring  verse  as  to  read  with- 
out impatience  the  violent  railing  against  all  things 
human  and  divine  by  which  this  poor  fellow  seeks  to 
excuse  a  somewhat  abject  surrender  to  misfortune  and 


136  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

materialism.  Self-respect  and  the  stoical  temper  unite 
to  disown  his  behaviour ;  and  the  stress  laid  throughout 
the  poem  on  the  disastrous  consequences  of  unbelief 
creates  a  suspicion  that  these  frenzied  denunciations 
are  delivered  with  an  eye  on  an  audience;  for  the 
desperate  half-drowned  man  makes  shrewd  hits  at 
infidel  science  and  strikes  out  against  Calvinistic 
Theology. 

"  What !  I  should  call  on  that  Infinite  Love  that  has  served  us 

so  well  ? 

Infinite  cruelty  rather  that  made  everlasting  Hell, 
Made  us,  foreknew  us,  foredoom'd  us,  and  does  what  he  will 

with  his  own  ; 
Better  our  dead  brute  mother  who  never  has  heard  us  groan." 

An  argumentative  intention  underlies  the  rhapsody, 
weakens  the  logic  of  the  situation,  and  produces  a 
sense  of  dramatic  insincerity.  In  one  single  line  by 
Keats,  "  Here,  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other 
groan,"  there  is  a  deeper  echo  of  human  misery  than 
in  all  this  declamation,  which  belongs  rather  to  the 
preacher  than  to  the  poet.  But  it  reflects  the  shade 
of  alarm  that  seems  to  have  continually  darkened 
Tennyson's  mind  when  he  brooded  over  subjects  of 
this  kind.  In  religion  he  was  an  optimist,  holding  a 
firm  belief  in  the  divine  wisdom  and  goodness ;  though 
the  aspect  and  course  of  Nature  appears  to  have  alter- 
nately encouraged  and  disheartened  him;  her  calm 
beauty  was  seen  to  cover  unmerciful  indifference ;  and 
formal  theology  brought  him  no  consolation.  His 
imagination  was  haunted  by  a  fear  that  scientific  teach- 
ing would  extinguish  belief  in  a  spiritual  life  to  come, 
and  would  leave  mankind  desolate  in  a  vast  universe. 
One  evening,  we  are  told  in  the  Memoir, 


v.]         PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         137 

"  he  was  talking  on  death,  and  quoting  a  Parisian  story  of  a 
man  having  deliberately  ordered  and  eaten  a  good  dinner,  and 
having  afterwards  committed  suicide  by  covering  his  face  with 
a  chloroformed  handkerchief.  '  That's  what  I  should  do,'  he 
said,  '  if  I  thought  there  was  no  future  life.' " 

The  remark,  though  recorded,  can  hardly  have  been 
made  seriously ;  but  it  contains  in  essence  the  senti- 
ment of  his  poem  Despair,  the  sombre  conception  of 
pessimism  as  almost  a  justification  of  suicide.  Unless 
the  miserable  condition  of  the  masses  can  be  improved 
—  if  want,  unhappiness,  and  squalor  are  ineradicable, 
as  they  seem  to  be  —  the  world,  for  the  greater  number 
of  mankind,  may  as  well  end  at  once  instead  of  rolling 
on  through  immense  periods.  And  even  if  we  are 
gradually  advancing  to  a  higher  and  happier  life  for 
all,  what  is  the  use  of  Progress  if  its  end  is  to  be  a 
final  extinction  of  all  animated  existence  upon  this 
planet  ?  These  are  the  two  currents  of  thought  that 
appear  to  have  perplexed  Tennyson's  meditations,  and 
to  run  through  such  poems  as  Despair,  and  through 
Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After *  — 

"  Is  it  well  that  while  we  range  with  Science,  glorying  in  the 

Time, 

City  children    soak    and    blacken    soul   and  sense  in   city 
slirne  ? 

"There  among  the  glooming  alleys  Progress  halts  on  palsied 

feet, 

Crime  and  hunger  cast  our  maidens  by  the  thousand  on  the 
street." 

And  he  still  harps,  in  the  same  poem,  on  his  feeling 
of  the  inutility  of  human  effort,  on  his  fear  lest  the 
dominion  of  science  should  deaden  our  spiritual  aspira- 
11887. 


138  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

tions;  he  reminds  us  that  our  transitory  existence 
in  time  is  little  worth,  that  progress  and  human  per- 
fectibility are  illusions,  and  the  world's  history  a  tale 
of  unmeaning  bustle  and  agitation,  signifying  nothing, 
unless  we  keep  alive  the  spiritual  instincts  and  the 
hope  of  immortality  — 

"  Truth,  for  Truth  is  Truth,  he  worshipt,  being  true  as  he  was 

brave  ; 

Good,  for  Good  is  Good,  he  follow'd,  yet  he  look'd  beyond  the 
grave, 

"  Wiser  there  than  you,  that  crowning  barren  Death  as  lord  of 
all, 

Deem  this  over-tragic  drama's  closing  curtain  is  the  pall  I 

******* 

' '  Gone  for  ever !    Ever  ?  no  —  for  since  our  dying  race  began, 

Ever,  ever,  and  for  ever  was  the  leading  light  of  man. 

******* 

"  Truth  for  truth,  and  good  for  good !     The  Good,  the  True,  the 

Pure,  the  Just  — 

Take  the  charm  '  For  ever  '  from  them,  and  they  crumble  into 
dust." 

The  stanzas  have  the  rhythmic  swell  and  regular 
fall  of  a  chant  by  some  prophetic  seer  looking  back- 
ward and  forward  over  the  procession  of  ages,  the 
spectator  of  all  time  and  all  existence,  who  distrusts 
the  advance  of  civilisation,  disdains  mere  physical 
betterment,  and  foretells  dire  conflicts  in  which  the 
nobler  qualities  of  man  may  perish  in  strife  against 
misrule  and  sensuality.  Toward  the  end  comes  a 
gentler  and  more  hopeful  note ;  yet  the  burden  of  the 
poem  is  still,  as  with  In  Memoriam,  the  oppressive 
immensity  of  space  and  time,  in  which  religions  and 
philosophic  systems  are  lost  like  planks  in  an  ocean, 
and  those  who  cling  to  them  are  tossed  about  until 
they  drop  into  the  depths  — 


v.]         PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY        139 

"Forward,  backward,  backward,  forward,   in  the  immeasur- 
able sea, 

Sway'd  by  vaster  ebbs  and  flows  than  can  be  known  to  you 
or  me. 

"  All  the  suns  —  are  these  but  symbols  of  innumerable  man, 
Man  or  Mind  that  sees  a  shadow  of  the  planner  or  the  plan  ? 

###**## 

"  What  are  men  that  He  should  heed  us  ?  cried  the  king  of 

sacred  song ; 

Insects  of  an  hour,  that  hourly  work  their  brother  insect 
wrong, 

"  While  the  silent  Heavens  roll,  and  Suns  along  their  fiery  way, 
All  their  planets  whirling  round  them,  flash  a  million  miles 
a  day. 

"Many  an  JEou  moulded  earth  before  her  highest,  man,  was 

born, 

Many  an  JEon.  too  may  pass  when  earth  is  manless   and 
forlorn." 

Among  these  illimitable  periods  a  life  of  seventy  or 
eighty  years  is  as  nothing,  and  human  efforts  and 
aspirations  sink  into  insignificance  ;  yet  the  old  squire 
has  the  consolation  that  it  is  something  to  have  had 
one's  day,  to  have  shared  the  lot  of  mankind  and  to 
have  helped  one's  neighbours,  and  to  stand  at  life's 
close  in  the  old  house,  which  is  full  of  early  memories 
of  joy  and  sorrow.  And  so  falls  the  curtain  on 
Locksley  Hall,  the  conclusion  of  a  romantic  drama 
that  runs  in  a  fragmentary  way  through  so  many  of 
Tennyson's  poems.  If  we  connect  the  scattered  links, 
we  have  the  conception  of  fretful  youth  with  ardent 
hopes  and  ambitions,  of  a  passionate  attachment  that 
is  broken  off  rudely  and  violently,  of  revolt  against 
social  injustice,  of  long  wrestling  with  the  spectres 


140  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

of  intellectual  doubt  and  depression,  of  gradual 
schooling  under  the  world's  hard  discipline,  and  of 
an  old  age  passing  quietly  amid  the  scenes  of  boy- 
hood, still  troubled  by  the  unintelligible  enigma  of 
the  Universe,  but  with  a  softened  retrospect  over 
the  past,  and  with  such  resignation  as  may  be  got 
from  trusting  that  the  immeasurable  course  of  Evolu- 
tion may  tend  to  some  far  distant  state  of  rest  and 
happiness. 

In  Vastness  l  the  figure  of  individual  man  has 
disappeared,  and  we  have  the  same  gloomy  panorama 
of  human  energy  and  suffering  contemplated  from  the 
point  of  its  utter  vanity  and  nothingness.  The  full 
organ-notes  reverberate  in  lines  that  touch  the  highest 
scale  of  sublimity  and  grandeur  in  Tennyson's  verse ; 
but  the  poem  is  too  heavily  charged  with  contrasted 
images,  and  the  light  is  too  lurid  — 

"Raving  politics,  never  at  rest  —  as  this  poor  earth's  pale 

history  runs,  — 

What  is  it  all  but  a  trouble  of  ants  in  the  gleam  of  a  million 
million  of  suns  ? 
#  *  *  *  *  *  * 

"  What  the  philosophies,  all  the  sciences,  poesy,  varying  voices 

of  prayer? 

All  that  is  noblest,  all  that  is  basest,  all  that  is  filthy  with  all 
that  is  fair  ? 

"  What  is  it  all,  if  we  all  of  us  end  but  in  being  our  own 

corpse-coffins  at  last, 

Swallow'd  in  Vastness,  lost  in  Silence,  drown'd  in  the  deeps 
of  a  meaningless  past  ? ' ' 

The  feeling  that  man  is  but  dust  and  shadow,  animated 

for  a  brief  moment,  that  he  is  born  to   sorrow,  and 

i  1889. 


v.]         PASTORALS;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         141 

that  his  works  perish,  is  primeval  in  poetry  and  in 
religion ;  the  starry  heavens  suggested  it  to  the  ancient 
sages  and  preachers  no  less  vividly  than  all  the  dis- 
coveries of  astronomy  and  geology.  They  confronted 
the  eternal  silences  mournfully,  yet  with  tranquil  in- 
trepidity ;  they  drew  lessons  of  composure  and  ethical 
fortitude  from  the  spectacle ;  they  used  it  to  rebuke 
cowardly  fear  and  superstition.  In  the  East  they 
relied  upon  the  soul's  gradual  emancipation  until 
it  should  escape  into  immateriality  from  the  demon 
that  afflicts  it  with  sensation.  If  the  modern  poet's 
imagination  appears  more  overpowered  by  alarm,  by 
a  kind  of  terror  lest  the  mainsprings  of  our  moral  and 
spiritual  activities  should  give  way,  we  have  to  con- 
sider that  the  tremendous  expansion  of  the  scientific 
record  in  these  latter  days  seems  to  have  affected 
Tennyson  like  a  sentence  of  inflexible  predestination, 
overshadowing  his  delight  iu  the  world's  glories  by  a 
foreknowledge  of  its  inevitable  doom.  The  vision 
which  unrolled  itself  before  his  imagination,  of  the 
blind  mechanical  evolution  of  a  world  "  dark  with 
griefs  and  graves,"  of  human  energy  squandered  on  a 
planet  that  is  passing  from  fire  to  frost,  evidently  fas- 
cinated his  mind  more  and  more,  and  possessed  it  with 
dismay.  That  mankind  and  their  works  must  perish, 
slowly  or  suddenly,  leaving  not  a  wrack  behind,  has 
been  the  warning  of  all  religions,  the  foundation  of  all 
beliefs  in  a  future  life ;  and  the  poem  of  Vastness  gives 
the  same  warning  in  the  terms  of  science,  but  without 
the  same  clear  note  of  intrepidity,  or  of  confidence 
in  revealed  promises.  Yet  Tennyson  has  his  antidote 
to  Despair.  Amid  the  general  shipwreck  of  positive 
creeds,  formal  theologies,  political  and  philosophic 


142  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

systems,  all  of  them  powerless  to  affect  man's  ultimate 
destiny,  we  have  gleams  of  spiritual  illumination  seen 
on  the  far-distant  horizon ;  we  have  a  profound  faith 
in  the  moral  direction  of  cosmic  laws,  in  a  spiritual 
basis  of  all  being,  in  a  kinship  and  affinity  between  the 
spiritual  element  in  man  and  the  divine  soul  which 
moves  the  whole  universe.  He  believes  with  Coleridge 
that  the  world  of  sense  is  in  some  manner  the  mani- 
festation of  supersensual  realities.  That  Love  is 
stronger  than  Death,  and  in  some  form  or  feeling 
will  survive  it,  is  the  idea  that  was  expressed  in  some 
of  the  most  musical  and  melancholy  stanzas  of  "In 
Memoriam  "  — 

"  Yet  if  some  voice  that  man  could  trust 
Should  murmur  from  the  narrow  house, 
'  The  cheeks  drop  in  ;  the  body  bows  ; 
Man  dies  :  nor  is  there  hope  in  dust : ' 

"  Might  I  not  say  ?  '  Yet  even  here, 
But  for  one  hour,  0  Love,  I  strive 
To  keep  so  sweet  a  thing  alive  : ' 
But  I  should  turn  mine  ears  and  hear 

"  The  meanings  of  the  homeless  sea, 

The  sound  of  streams  that  swift  or  slow 
Draw  down  Ionian  hills,  and  sow 
The  dust  of  continents  to  be  ; 

"  And  Love  would  answer  with  a  sigh, 
'  The  sound  of  that  forgetful  shore 
Will  change  my  sweetness  more  and  more, 
Half -dead  to  know  that  I  shall  die.' 

"  0  me,  what  profits  it  to  put 

An  idle  case  ?    If  Death  were  seen 
At  first  as  Death,  Love  had  not  been, 
Or  been  in  narrowest  working  shut." 


r.]         PASTORALS  j  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        143 

And  in  Akbar's  Dream,1  written   many  years  after- 
ward, we  have  the  mystic's  invocation  of  Allah  as  the 

Sun  of  Love  — 

' '  But  dimly  seen 

Here,  till  the  mortal  morning  mists  of  earth 
Fade  in  the  noon  of  heaven,  when  creed  and  race 
Shall  bear  false  witness,  each  of  each,  no  more, 
But  find  their  limits  by  the  larger  light, 
And  overstep  them,  moving  easily 
Thro'  after-ages  in  the  love  of  Truth, 
The  truth  of  Love." 

He  believes  that  the  deepest  human  affections  are  signs 
and  symbols  of  our  participation  in  something  divine. 
The  Ancient  Sage,  another  poem  that  appeared 
toward  the  close  of  Tennyson's  life,  is  perhaps  the 
least  indefinite  exposition  of  his  hopeful  philosophy. 
He  touches  here  upon  the  conviction,  so  prevalent 
in  Oriental  mysticism,  that  the  entire  phantasmagoria 
of  sense  perception  is  essentially  deceptive  and  unsub- 
stantial, an  illusion  that  will  vanish  with  nearer  and 
clearer  apprehension  of  the  Divine  Presence  which 
sustains  the  whole  system  of  being  — 

"  If  the  Nameless  should  withdraw  from  all 
Thy  frailty  counts  most  real,  all  thy  world 
Might  vanish  like  thy  shadow  in  the  dark." 

We  are  now  in  darkness,  but  larger  knowledge  may 

come  — 

"  And  we,  the  poor  earth's  dying  race,  and  yet 
No  phantoms,  watching  from  a  phantom  shore 
Await  the  last  and  largest  sense  to  make 
The  phantom  walls  of  this  illusion  fade, 
And  show  us  that  the  world  is  wholly  fair." 

The  faint  recollections  that  flit  through  the  brain 
1 1892. 


144  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  childhood  are  described  in  lines  which  have  all 
Tennyson's  delicate  susceptibility  to  the  lightest 
impressions  of  the  eye  or  ear  — 

"The  first  gray  streak  of  earliest  summer-dawn, 
The  last  long  stripe  of  waning  crimson  gloom, 
As  if  the  late  and  early  were  but  one  — 
A  height,  a  broken  grange,  a  grove,  a  flower 
Had  murmurs  '  Lost  and  gone  and  lost  and  gone  ! ' 
A  breath,  a  whisper  —  some  divine  farewell  — 
Desolate  sweetness  —  far  and  far  away." 

It  may  be  a  world  of  flitting  shadows,  yet  there  is 
work  to  be  done,  and  light  beyond  — 

"Let  be  thy  wail,  and  help  thy  fellow  men." 

Amid  the  scenes  of  lust  and  luxury,  which  chain  down 
the  soul  — 

"Look  higher,  then  —  perchance  —  thou  mayest  — beyond 
A  hundred  ever-rising  mountain  lines 
And  past  the  range  of  Night  and  Shadow  —  see 
The  high-heaven  dawn  of  more  than  mortal  day 
Strike  on  the  Mount  of  Vision." 

There  is  hesitation  in  the  Sage's  accents ;  and  the  poet 
can  do  little  more  than  enjoin  us  to  follow  the  gleams 
of  light  that  pierce  the  clouds  which  envelop  our  mortal 
existence.  Science  threatens  to  keep  us  wandering  in 
an  interminable  labyrinth.  Yet  Science  may  be  a 
symbolical  language  shadowing  forth  divine  truths,  a 
cypher  by  which  those  who  have  the  key  may  read, 
in  glimpses  and  occasional  rays  of  light,  a  message 
of  secret  encouragement ;  and  Evolution,  a  theory  of 
futile  transformations  in  the  physical  order,  may  be 
typical  of  the  upward  striving  and  gradual  eman- 
cipation of  man  as  a  spiritual  being.  Some  such 


v.]        PASTORALS ;  TENNYSON'S  PHILOSOPHY        145 

conclusions  as  these  we  can  extract  and  piece  together 
from  Tennyson's  later  meditations ;  and  if  they  are  not 
always  distinct  and  coherent,  we  have  to  remember 
vhat  systematic  philosophy  lies  outside  the  proper 
range  of  a  poet's  art  or  his  mission. 

In  Tiresias  the  poet  goes  back  again  to  antiquity, 
to  the  legend  of  the  blind  prophet  who  is  in  communion 
with  the  deities,  and  who,  when  Thebes  is  beleaguered 
and  about  to  fall,  proclaims  the  Divine  decree  that 
one  man  must  devote  himself  to  death  for  the  salvation 
of  his  state  and  people.  We  have  in  this  story  the 
inveterate  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  human  sacrifice  that 
has  run  through  the  superstitions  of  all  ages  and 
countries ;  it  contains  the  moral  idea  of  self-devotion 
mixed  up  with  the  notion  that  the  angry  gods  may 
be  appeased  by  a  precious  victim;  and  the  modern 
poet  transfigures  the  legend  into  a  lofty  encomium 
upon  the  glory  of  patriotic  martyrdom  — 

' '  My  son, 

No  sound  is  breathed  so  potent  to  coerce, 
And  to  conciliate,  as  their  names  who  dare 
For  that  sweet  mother  land  which  gave  them  birth 
Nobly  to  do,  nobly  to  die.     Their  names, 
Graven  on  memorial  columns,  are  a  song 
Heard  in  the  future  ;  few,  but  more  than  wall 
And  rampart,  their  examples  reach  a  hand 
Far  thro'  all  years,  and  everywhere  they  meet 
And  kindle  generous  purpose,  and  the  strength 
To  mould  it  into  action  pure  as  theirs." 

It  is  refreshing,  after  the  dreary  visions  of  a  ruined 
and  silent  world,  of  the  inutility  of  all  human  effort, 
and  of  the  cold  eschatology  predicted  by  Science,  to 
look  back  again  in  Tiresias  on  the  ancient  world, 
to  a  time  when  men  were  citizens  of  a  petty  state 


146  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

instead  of  a  vast  empire,  trained  to  meet  real  perils 
with  fortitude  and  endurance,  thinking  always  of 
the  fortunes  of  their  people,  and  knowing  nothing  of 
the  remote  destinies  of  mankind,  nor  balancing  two 
worlds,  the  present  and  the  future,  against  each  other. 
In  such  conditions  of  existence  their  joys  and  griefs, 
their  fears  and  hopes,  were  simple,  direct,  and  con- 
fined within  a  narrow  compass.  As  the  idea  of 
progress  and  the  perfectibility  of  society  had 
little  or  no  hold  on  them,  so  they  were  not  deeply 
discomposed  by  the  knowledge  that  all  things  are 
mutable  and  transitory.  As  their  minds  were  neither 
troubled  by  the  prospect  of  an  immeasurable  future 
for  the  earth,  nor  by  the  discovery  of  its  remote  past, 
so  they  could  concentrate  their  efforts  and  aspirations 
on  the  ideals  which  ennoble  the  present  life,  on  courage, 
temperance,  and  justice,  on  making  the  best  of  it  by 
harmonising  the  inevitable  conditions  of  existence.  To 
the  poets  and  philosophers  of  antiquity,  who  knew  well 
that  the  highest  truths  lie  beyond  experience,  the 
rebellious  outburst  of  Despair  and  the  blank  dismay 
of  Vastness  would  have  appeared  irrational  and  pro- 
foundly inconsistent  with  the  sense  of  duty  and  virtue, 
tending  to  obliterate  the  distinctions  of  good  and  evil, 
and  to  degrade  all  human  society  to  the  level  of  insects. 
From  the  prison-house  of  materialism  Tennyson  him- 
self found  release  in  his  firm  trust  that  all  things  are 
divinely  ordered,  and  that  annihilation  is  inconceivable ; 
yet  his  reflections  on  death  are  constantly  tinged  with 
misgivings.  The  verses  added  as  an  epilogue  to 
Tiresias  have  the  full  spontaneous  flow  in  perfect 
measure,  with  a  sure  echoing  stroke  of  the  rhymes, 
that  attest  consummate  workmanship.  In  the  prel- 


v.]         PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         147 

ude  he  had  greeted  his  old  friend,  Edward  FitzGerald : 
and  when  he  wrote  these  final  stanzas  he  had  heard  of 
his  death  — 

"  The  tolling  of  his  funeral  bell 

Broke  on  my  Pagan  Paradise. 
******* 
Gone  into  darkness,  that  full  light 

Of  friendship  !  past,  in  sleep,  away 
By  night,  into  the  deeper  night ! 

The  deeper  night  ?    A  clearer  day 
Than  our  poor  twilight  dawn  on  earth  — 

If  night,  what  barren  toil  to  be  ! 
What  life,  so  maim'd  by  night,  were  worth 
Our  living  out  ?     Not  mine  to  me." 

"The  doubtful  doom  of  human  kind"  haunts  his 
imagination ;  he  dwells  upon  the  idea  that  Song  will 
vanish  in  the  Vast,  will  end  in  stillness,  and  he 
glances  back  regretfully  at  the  pagan  paradise  —  at 

those  who 

"  Scarce  could  see,  as  now  we  see, 

The  man  in  Space  and  Time, 
So  drew  perhaps  a  happier  lot 

Than  ours,  who  rhyme  to-day. 
The  fires  that  arch  this  dusky  dot — 

Yon  myriad-worlded  way  — 
The  vast  sun-clusters'  gather'd  blaze, 

World-isles  in  lonely  skies, 
Whole  heavens  within  themselves,  amaze 

Our  brief  humanities." 

The  conclusion,  sooner  or  later,  of  the  human  drama, 
the  finality  of  all  earthly  existence  —  these  ideas  have 
been  the  articles  of  primary  belief  in  every  religion, 
and  belong  to  the  presentiments  and  expectations  that 
are  natural  to  the  human  mind,  for  we  are  surrounded 
by  decay  and  death,  and  the  illimitable  is  an  incon- 


148  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ceivable  idea.  But  in  apocalyptic  predictions  the 
earth  itself  was  to  be  destroyed  and  disappear  with  all 
it  contained,  was  to  founder  like  a  ship  in  mid-ocean, 
or  like  a  volcanic  island  sinking  suddenly.  It  is  the 
prospect  of  this  planet,  a  minute  and  negligible  part 
of  the  universe,  rolling  round  in  its  diurnal  course 
after  man  and  his  works  have  vanished,  of  inanimate 
matter  surviving  with  entire  unconcern  all  vital  ener- 
gies, that  seems  to  have  oppressed  the  poet  with  dejec- 
tion at  the  thought  of  mortal  man's  utter  insignificance. 
In  this  mood  life  lost  for  him  all  interest  and  mean- 
ing, except  through  faith  in  the  perpetuation  of  the 
spiritual  particle ;  and  his  own  quotation  from  Mar- 
veil  indicates  the  prevailing  bent  of  his  reflections  — 

"At  my  back  I  always  hear 
Time's  winged  chariot  hurrying  near, 
And  yonder  all  before  us  lie 
The  deserts  of  eternity." 

To  such  feelings  his  poetry  gave  sublimity  and  a 
transcendent  range  of  contemplation;  yet  it  must  be 
remarked  that  they  have  a  tendency  to  weigh  down  the 
mainsprings  of  human  activity.  They  are  akin  to  the 
subtle  opiates  of  Oriental  philosophy,  which  teaches 
the  nothingness  of  sensuous  life ;  but  fortunately  the 
energetic  races  of  the  world  are  not  easily  discouraged. 
For  it  is  the  inevitability  of  death  that  gives  a  stim- 
ulus to  life;  and  strenuous  minds  draw  a  motive  for 
exertion,  for  working  while  the  light  lasts,  from  that 
very  sense  of  the  brevity  of  human  existence  and  the 
uncertainty  of  what  may  lie  beyond,  which,  although 
Tennyson  fought  against  it  manfully,  did  undoubtedly 
haunt  his  meditations  and  depress  the  spirit  of  his 
later  inspirations.  He  relied,  indeed,  upon  the  sense 


v.]        PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY        149 

of  right,  of  duty,  and  of  trust  in  the  final  purpose  of  a 
Creator ;  nevertheless,  he  seems  to  have  been  continu- 
ally disturbed  by  the  fear  lest  the  scientific  forecast 
of  blank  desolation  for  this  planet,  and  the  uncertainty 
of  a  future  conscious  existence  for  mankind,  might 
fatally  weaken  the  power  of  these  high  motives  to 
fortify  human  conduct,  and  to  sustain  virtue.  Yet  in 
the  four  volumes  of  Jowett's  Plato,  which  he  received 
from  the  translator  in  1871,  he  must  have  found  — 
not  only  in  the  dialogues,  but  also  in  Jowett's  charac- 
teristic commentaries  —  that  loftier  conception  of  ser- 
vice in  the  cause  of  truth  and  humanity,  which  can 
inspire  men  to  go  forward  undauntedly,  whatever  may 
be  their  destiny  beyond  the  grave. 

In  discussing  Tennyson's  poetry  and  his  intellectual 
tendencies  it  has  been  necessary  to  disregard  chrono- 
logical sequence  and  to  anticipate,  for  the  purpose  of 
a  connected  survey.  We  must  now  take  up  again 
the  chronicle  of  his  elder  life,  which  is  very  slightly 
marked  by  events,  except  when  increasing  years 
brought  ever-rising  fame  and  public  honours.  In  1869 
he  was  made  an  Honorary  Fellow  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge ;  and  in  1873  Mr.  Gladstone  proposed  a 
baronetcy,  but  such  promotion  had  evidently  no  at- 
traction for  him.  In  1874  this  offer  was  repeated  by 
Mr.  Disraeli  (who  does  not  seem  to  have  been  aware 
that  it  had  been  already  made)  in  a  high-flying  senten- 
tious letter,  evidently  attuned  to  the  deeper  harmonies 
of  the  mysterious  relations  between  genius  and  gov- 
ernment. 

"A  government  should  recognize  intellect.  It  elevates 
and  sustains  the  spirit  of  a  nation.  But  it  is  an  office  not 


150  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

easy  to  fulfil ;  for  if  it  falls  into  favouritism  and  the  pat- 
ronage of  mediocrity,  instead  of  raising  the  national  senti- 
ment, it  might  degrade  and  debase  it.  Her  Majesty,  by  the 
advice  of  Her  Ministers,  has  testified  in  the  Arctic  expedi- 
tion, and  will  in  other  forms,  her  sympathy  with  science. 
But  it  is  desirable  that  the  claims  of  high  letters  should  be 
equally  acknowledged.  This  is  not  so  easy  a  matter, 
because  it  is  in  the  nature  of ;  things  that  the  test  of  merit 
cannot  be  so  precise  in  literature  as  in  science.  Neverthe- 
less, etc.,  etc." 1 

The  honour  was  nevertheless  again  respectfully  de- 
clined, with  a  suggestion,  pronounced  by  authority  to 
be  impracticable,  that  it  might  be  reserved  for  confer- 
ment upon  his  son  after  his  own  death. 

Mrs.  Tennyson's  journal  for  this  time  —  when  they 
lived  alternately  between  Farringford  and  Aldworth, 
making  an  annual  visit  to  London  —  is  full  of  interest, 
recording  various  sayings  and  doings,  conversation, 
correspondence,  anecdotes,  and  glimpses  of  notable 
visitors  —  Tourgueneff,  Longfellow,  Jenny  Lind,  Hux- 
ley, and  Gladstone,  to  the  last  of  whom  he  read  aloud 
the  Holy  Grail.  At  the  house  of  G.  H.  Lewes  he  read 
Guinevere,  which  made  George  Eliot  weep;  and  at 
home  he  was  visited  by  General  Charles  Gordon,  to 
whom  the  poems  were  a  solace  and  a  delight  in  peril- 
ous days  at  Khartoum.  There  was  a  project  of  bring- 
ing about  a  meeting  with  Xewman,  between  whom  and 
Tennyson  an  exchange,  or  possibly  a  collision,  of  phil- 
osophic ideas  would  have  been  well  worth  recording ; 
but  nothing  came  of  it,  and  the  meeting  remains  a 
good  subject  for  an  Imaginary  Conversation.  For 
Tennyson's  table-talk  at  this  period  readers  must  go 
to  the  Memoir,  from  which  it  would  be  unfair  to  pick 
1  Memoir. 


v.]         PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S   PHILOSOPHY         151 

many  sayings  or  anecdotes  wherewith  to  season  these 
pages.  He  had  much  of  the  epigrammatic  faculty ; 
he  could  condense  a  criticism  into  a  few  words,  as 
when  he  said  that  Miss  Austen  understood  the  small- 
ness  of  life  to  perfection ;  he  could  put  colour  into  it, 
as  when  he  remarks  that  poets  enrich  the  blood  of  the 
world ;  and  he  could  frame  a  thought,  not  always  in 
itself  very  precious,  with  great  felicity.  Of  amusing 
anecdotes  that  struck  his  fancy,  or  were  collected  by 
his  friends  to  show  the  wide  popularity  of  his  poems, 
there  are  many ;  for  at  Farringford  he  was  the  cyno- 
sure of  neighbouring  eyes,  while  he  was  hunted  by 
tourists  abroad,  and  at  home  the  visitors  sat  at  his 
feet.  He  had  indeed  at  this  time  to  pass  the  ordeal 
of  somewhat  unqualified  adulation,  though  one  inti- 
mate friend,  Mrs.  Cameron,  never  failed  to  speak  out 
her  mind.  His  discourses  on  poetry,  with  his  favour- 
ite quotations,  prove  a  keen  discrimination  of  literary 
quality,  with  a  mastery  of  technique  that  is  the  gift 
of  a  practical  artist.  Among  his  quotations  may  be 
noticed,  as  a  curiosity,  the  lines  from  Henry  VIII.1 :  — 

"To-day,  the  French, 

All  clinquant,  all  in  gold,  like  heathen  gods, 
Shone  down  the  English  ;  and,  to-morrow,  they 
Made  Britain,  India," 

where  Shakespeare,  in  his  large  manner  of  illustrating 
the  Oriental  glitter  of  the  English  array  on  the  Field 
of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  writes  as  one  suddenly  possessed 
by  the 

"prophetic  soul 
Of  the  wide  world  dreaming  on  things  to  come," 

1  Act  i.  Scene  i. 


152  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

and  falls  unconsciously  into  a  vision  of  the  future. 
For  nearly  two  centuries  later  it  was  the  contest 
between  France  and  England  in  the  East  that  did 
actually  and  directly  lead  to  the  making  of  British 
India. 

The  diary  is  a  faithful  and  valuable  memorial  of 
English  country  life  at  its  best  toward  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Living  quietly  with  his 
family,  he  was  in  constant  intercourse  with  the  most 
distinguished  men  of  his  day,  and  was  himself  honoured 
of  ,them  all;  a  society  that  gave  him  all  that  he 
desired,  and  not  more  than  he  most  undoubtedly 
deserved. 

In  1878  came  the  marriage  of  his  younger  son 
Lionel  to  Miss  Locker.  Seven  years  afterward,  in 
1885,  they  made  a  journey  to  India,  where  Lionel 
unfortunately  caught  a  fever  of  which  he  died  on 
the  homeward  voyage.  Tennyson's  verses  To  the 
Marquis  of  Dufferin  and  Ava,  always  the  most 
largehearted  and  generous  of  friends,  acknowledge 
the  kindness  and  unmeasured  hospitality  which  his 
son  received  during  his  illness  from  the  Viceroy  of 
India  — 

"  But  while  my  life's  late  eve  endures, 

Nor  settles  into  hueless  gray, 

My  memories  of  his  briefer  day 
Will  mix  with  love  for  you  and  yours." 

With  Carlyle  Tennyson  remained  in  constant  inter- 
course personally,  and  with  FitzGerald  by  letters,  ex- 
cept for  a  short  visit  to  him  at  Woodbridge  in  1876  — 
"  the  lonely  philosopher,  a  '  man  of  humorous-melan- 
choly-mark,' with  his  gray  floating  locks,  sitting  among 
his  doves."  They  never  met  again  afterwards.  It  is  a 


v.]         PASTORALS  ;  TENNYSON'S    PHILOSOPHY         153 

rarity  in  modern  life  that  two  such  men  as  Tennyson 
and  FitzGerald,  whose  mutual  friendship  was  never 
shaken,  should  have  met  but  once  in  twenty-five 
years  of  life,  although  divided  by  no  longer  space 
than  could  be  traversed  by  a  three  hours'  railway 
journey.  In  FitzGerald's  judgment  Tennyson  reached 
the  grand  climacteric  of  his  poetry  in  the  volumes 
of  1842,  for  the  Idylls,  and  the  later  moral  and 
didactic  strain  of  verse,  were  not  to  his  taste ;  though 
in  1873  he  wrote  to  Tennyson,  who  had  sent  him 
Gareth  and  Lynette,  that  he  admired  many  passages 
in  the  Idylls.  It  may  be  true,  as  is  remarked  in  the 
Memoir,  that  FitzGerald's  sequestered  way  of  life 
kept  him  in  a  critical  groove,  and  that  he  was  crotch- 
ety is  confessed  by  himself.  Nevertheless,  in  the  unani- 
mous chorus  of  applause  from  all  the  illustrious  men 
of  that  time,  the  dissentient  voice  of  the  scholarly 
recluse,  always  admiring  and  affectionate,  was  worth 
listening  to ;  and  many  may  question  whether  the 
settled  opinion  of  a  later  generation  will  find  much 
fault  with  it. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   PLAYS 

WHEN  Tennyson,  in  1875,  brought  out  his  play  of 
Queen  Mary,  he  made  his  entry  upon  a  field  into 
which  no  first-class  English  poet  had  ventured  for  a 
long  time  previously.  Coleridge's  play  of  Remorse 
had  a  fair  run,  because  it  was  written  down  to  the 
level  of  popular  taste  ;  and  his  poetic  genius  had  little 
to  do  with  its  success.  Shelley  and  Byron  wrote 
dramatic  poetry,  and  Shelley  believed  that  The  Cenci 
was  well  fitted  for  the  stage,  but  it  never  appeared  on 
the  boards,  although  the  figure  of  Beatrice  is  undoubt- 
edly drawn  with  great  tragic  power.  Byron  openly 
declared  that  his  dramas  were  not  written  with  the 
slightest  view  to  the  stage ;  and,  in  short,  we  must  go 
back  to  Goldsmith  for  a  poet  who  was  also  a  successful 
playwright.  None  of  these  poets  had  taken  their  plots 
or  characters  from  English  history  ;  so  that  there  was 
novelty  in  Tennyson's  design  of  continuing  the  line  of 
Shakespeare's  English  chronicle-plays  by  dramatising 
great  periods  of  our  history.  In  France  the  historic 
drama  came  in  for  a  few  years  with  Victor  Hugo  and 
the  romanticists ;  yet  it  may  be  affirmed  that  no 
French  dramatist  of  the  first  order  has  ever  founded  a 
play  on  the  annals  of  France ;  and  we  may  suppose 
that  the  classic  taste  and  style,  which  rejects  details 
and  local  colouring,  dealing  in  noble  sentiments  rhetori- 

154 


CHAP,  vi.]  THE   PLAYS  155 

cally  delivered,  had  discouraged  and  thrown  out  of 
fashion  any  attempt  to  exhibit  on  the  stage  famous 
national  events  and  personages,  surrounding  them  with 
the  variety  of  character  and  circumstance  that  belong 
to  real  life.  Mrs.  Tennyson  notes  in  her  diary  for 
April  1874  that  her  husband  had  thought  of  William 
the  Silent  as  the  subject  for  a  play  ;  but  had  said  that 
our  own  history  was  so  great,  and  that  he  liked  English 
subjects  and  knew  most  about  them,  so  that  he  had 
begun  Queen  Mary. 

From  the  point  of  view  taken  in  the  foregoing 
observations,  therefore,  we  have  a  new  departure  in 
this  play,  which  introduces  us  to  that  most  critical 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  English  people,  when  vio- 
lent religious  changes,  a  doubtful  succession  to  the 
crown,  and  foreign  marriages  had  spread  terror,  sus- 
picion, and  discord  throughout  England'  and  Scotland, 
producing  that  fermentation  of  conspiracies,  rebellions, 
and  persecutions  which  is  generated  by  a  mixture  of 
religion  and  politics  at  a  high  temperature.  The  car- 
dinal point  of  the  situation  was  that  in  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century  the  successions  to  both  the 
English  and  Scottish  crowns  had  fallen  to  daughters ; 
and  that  this  had  occurred  almost  simultaneously  with 
the  culmination  of  the  great  revolt  against  the  Papacy, 
with  the  fierce  religious  wars  in  western  Europe,  and 
with  the  contest  between  Erance  and  Spain  for  ascen- 
dency. The  Emperor  Charles  V.  married  his  son  to 
Mary  Tudor  of  England  in  order  to  secure  an  English 
alliance.  As  a  counter  move,  Henry  II.  of  Erance 
married  the  Dauphin  to  Mary  Stuart  of  Scotland ;  and 
so  the  two  Catholic  queens,  representing  antagonistic 
politics,  were  ruling  two  kingdoms,  in  both  of  which 


166  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

a  powerful  party  of  nobles,  with  strong  popular  sup- 
port, were  stubborn  adherents   of  the   Reformation. 

"  Mary  of  Scotland,  married  to  your  Dauphin, 
Would  make  our  England,  France  ; 
Mary  of  England,  joining  hands  with  Spain, 
Would  be  too  strong  for  France."  l 

No  more  arduous  or  complicated  position,  sure  to  de- 
velop character,  has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  women  than 
that  of  either  Queen.  Mary  Stuart's  life  and  death 
were  infinitely  the  more  romantic  and  pitiful ;  a  beau- 
tiful frail  woman  swept  onward  as  if  by  Fate  to  death 
on  the  scaffold,  a  sacrifice  to  implacable  policy,  fulfils 
the  highest  conditions  of  a  tragic  drama.  Shakespeare 
might  have  written  it,  if  she  had  not  been  so  nearly  of 
his  own  time.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  romance, 
no  play  of  wild  passion,  no  fateful  catastrophe,  in  the 
life  of  Mary  Tudor ;  she  had  a  touch  of  her  father's 
courage,  but  also  of  his  cruelty ;  she  was  a  dull  woman 
with  no  feminine  charm ;  her  reign  was  one  long 
failure ;  and  she  left  the  grand  part  in  history  to  be 
taken  up  and  played  royally  by  her  sister  Elizabeth. 
One  might  therefore  say  that  Tennyson,  in  fixing  upon 
Queen  Mary  and  her  reign,  had  chosen  a  difficult 
subject  for  the  theatre,  since  the  leading  character  is 
neither  heroic  nor  intensely  pathetic ;  she  was  a  mis- 
erable disappointed  woman  whose  name  has  an  indel- 
ible stain  of  blood  upon  it.  Nevertheless  Tennyson's 
play  is  a  dramatic  reading  of  authentic  history,  exe- 
cuted with  much  animation  and  with  imaginative  force 
in  the  presentation  of  character.  Although  the  interest 
in  the  story  belongs  rather  to  the  events  and  circum- 
1  Act  i.  Scene  v. 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  157 

stances  than  to  the  persons,  yet  the  poet  fills  in  skil- 
fully the  historic  outlines ;  he  gives  elevation  to  the 
speeches  and  sentiments ;  he  realises  for  us  the  motives 
and  actions  of  men  and  women  who  paid  forfeit  for  a 
lost  cause  at  the  stake  or  on  the  scaffold ;  he  exhibits 
lively  pictures  of  the  court  and  the  street.  He  con- 
trives to  invest  Mary  with  some  dignity,  and  to  extract 
from  us  some  scanty  sympathy  with  her  unhappiness  ; 
though  it  is  impossible  to  make  of  her  the  central 
figure  on  which  the  eyes  of  an  audience  should  be 
riveted  as  the  action  proceeds.  The  main  interest  is 
rather  political  than  personal.  Cranmer,  Gardiner, 
Wyatt,  White  the  Lord  Mayor,  Paget  and  Pole, 
Noailles  and  Eenard,  pass  over  the  stage  and  discharge 
their  historical  parts  in  speeches  full  of  concise  and 
characteristic  expression ;  but  to  bring  all  these  parts 
into  dramatic  unity,  and  to  make  an  imaginative 
plot  out  of  a  page  of  familiar  history,  was  probably 
beyond  the  power  even  of  first-rate  genius.  Tennyson 
himself  perceived  that  the  older  chronicles,  which  pre- 
served only  the  striking  features  of  the  time,  allowed 
greater  scope  to  the  creative  faculty  than  a  precise 
knowledge  of  men  and  events  which  binds  a  poet  down 
to  the  facts,  for  the  necessity  of  being  accurate  im- 
pairs the  illusion ;  and  the  historical  dramatist  finds 
himself  more  at  ease  in  a  distant  half-known  age,  or 
anywhere  else  than  in  his  own  country.  Mary  Stuart 
and  Mary  Tudor  have  been  brought  on  the  stage  by 
foreigners,  Schiller  and  Victor  Hugo,  in  the  latter  case 
with  indifferent  success.  Moreover,  although  broad 
colours  and  circumstantial  details  give  the  scenes  a 
realistic  impressiveness,  they  rather  detract  from  the 
universality  so  to  speak,  which  is  the  attribute  of  a 


158  TEKNYSON  [CHAP. 

great  drama.     Shakespeare's  finest   plays  are  inde- 
pendent of  and  disregard  such  accessories. 

Nevertheless  the  portrait  painting,  under  these 
inevitable  limitations,  is  very  well  done,  and  it 
illuminates  an  eventful  period.  The  priests,  states- 
men, and  martyrs  of  Mary's  short  and  troubled  reign 
stand  out  in  clear  relief ;  the  strong  light  thrown  upon 
their  figures  discloses  the  intrigues  and  clashing  poli- 
tics of  a  time  when  the  balance  seemed  to  hang  even 
between  the  old  faith  and  the  new,  just  when  the 
Spanish  marriage  was  adding  a  heavy  weight  to  the 
side  of  Rome.  Paget,  Howard,  Wyatt,  and  Bagenhall 
represent  the  Englishman  of  that  day  for  whom  reli- 
gion was  a  question  of  politics.  Pole,  Bonner,  and 
Gardiner  are  the  ecclesiastics  for  whom  political  power 
was  an  instrument  for  the  enforcement  of  religious 
conformity.  Mary  and  Elizabeth  are  the  royal  imper- 
sonations of  the  two  parties,  both  princesses  of  the 
Tudor  blood,  with  the  inherited  courage  that  rises  to 
emergencies  ;  but  Mary  has  the  foreign  strain  of  big- 
otry, while  Elizabeth,  a  full  Englishwoman,  has  an  in- 
stinctive understanding  of  and  fellow-feeling  with  the 
real  temper  of  her  countrymen.  On  the  whole  Tennyson 
does  Mary  more  than  justice ;  for  he  uses  the  license 
of  a  dramatist  to  endow  her  with  much  more  energy  of 
speech  and  action  than  she  can  really  have  possessed, 
and  to  impart  a  fierce  glow  to  her  gloomy  fanaticism. 

Mary : 

O  God  !  I  have  been  too  slack,  too  slack  ; 

There  are  Hot  Gospellers  even  among  our  guards  — 

Nobles  we  dared  not  touch.     We  have  but  burnt 

The  heretic  priest,  workmen,  and  women  and  children. 

Wet,  famine,  ague,  fever,  storm,  wreck,  wrath,  — 


vi.]  THE   PLAYS  159 

We  have  so  play'd  the  coward  ;  but  by  God's  grace, 
We'll  follow  Philip's  leading,  and  set  up 
The  Holy  Office  here  —  garner  the  wheat, 
And  burn  the  tares  with  unquenchable  fire.1 

Cecil's  brief  reflections,  after  conversing  with  Eliza- 
beth, mark  the  contrast  — 

"  Much  it  is 

To  be  nor  mad,  nor  bigot  —  have  a  mind  — 
Not  let  Priests'  talk,  or  dream  of  worlds  to  be, 
Miscolour  things  about  her  —  sudden  touches 
For  him,  or  him  —  sunk  rocks  ;  no  passionate  faith  — 
But  —  if  let  be  —  balance  and  compromise  ; 
Brave,  wary,  sane  to  the  heart  of  her  —  a  Tudor 
School'd  by  the  shadow  of  death  —  a  Boleyn,  too, 
Glancing  across  the  Tudor  —  not  so  well."  2 

The  passage  is  a  model  of  laconic  expression,  indicat- 
ing rapid  and  concentrated  thought.  In  the  general 
diction  of  this  play  the  absence  of  ornament  is  remark- 
able ;  the  poet  has  put  a  curb  011  his  fancy,  and  has 
stripped  his  English  for  the  encounter  of  keen  wits 
occupied  in  affairs  of  State  ;  the  priests,  politicians, 
and  soldiers  waste  no  words.  Yet  we  have  here  and 
there  familiar  touches  of  the  picturesque,  as  in  Wyatt's 
reference  to  his  father  — 

Wyatt  : 

Courtier  of  many  courts,  he  loved  the  more 

His  own  gray  towers,  plain  life  and  letter'd  peace, 

To  read  and  rhyme  in  solitary  fields, 

The  lark  above,  the  nightingale  below, 

And  answer  them  in  song.3 

Also  in  the  rendering  of  that  well-known  story  of 
Wyatt  reconnoitring  the  breach  in  London  Bridge, 

1  Act  v.  Scene  v.  2Ibid.  8  Act.  n.  Scene  i. 


160  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

whereby  he  was  cut  off  from  the  city,  was  forced  to 
march  round  by  Kingston,  and  failed  in  his  enterprise — 

"  Last  night  I  climb'd  into  the  gate-house,  Brett, 
And  scared  the  gray  old  porter  and  his  wife. 
And  then  I  crept  along  the  gloom  and  saw 
They  had  hewn  the  drawbridge  down  into  the  river. 
It  roll'd  as  black  as  death  ;  and  that  same  tide 
Which,  coming  with  our  coming,  seem'd  to  smile 
And  sparkle  like  our  fortune  as  thou  saidst, 
Ran  sunless  down,  and  moaned  against  the  piers." 1 

The  play  of  "  Harold,"  which  followed  next  in  the 
"  historical  trilogy,"  2  takes  us  back  to  a  period  when 
history  is  still  blended  with  romance;  so  that  the 
dramatist  could  let  loose  the  reins  of  his  imagination, 
and  could  fashion  his  characters  at  pleasure  within 
the  broad  outlines  of  tradition.  He  has  thus  escaped 
from  the  bonds  of  exactitude  ;  he  can  be  more  poetic ; 
he  can  even  avail  himself  of  the  privilege,  which  is 
legitimate  when  used  moderately,  of  giving  a  turn  of 
modern  sentiment  to  the  language  of  personages  be- 
longing to  a  distant  century.  Yet  Tennyson  has 
nowhere  in  this  play  done  violence  to  historic  proba- 
bilities in  his  delineation  of  character  and  situation ; 
he  takes  the  main  incidents,  such  as  the  detention  of 
Harold  in  Normandy  until  he  had  solemnly  sworn  to 
acknowledge  and  assist  William's  claim  to  the  English 
crown,  the  death  of  Edward  the  Confessor,  the  battles 
of  Stamford  Bridge  and  Senlac,  and  composes  them 
into  dramatic  scenes  as  an  artist  might  paint  pictures 
of  them.  The  dialogue  between  Harold  and  his 
brother  Wulfnoth,  when  both  are  prisoners  of  the 
Norman  at  Bayeux,  and  when  Wulfnoth  is  imploring 

1  Act  u.  Scene  iii. 

2  Mary,  Harold,  Becket.    Memoir,  vol.  ii.  p.  173. 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  161 

Harold  to  obtain  their  liberty  by  swearing  fealty  to 
William,  has  striking  and  finely  versified  passages ; 
the  pressure  of  conflicting  feelings  is  well  rendered. 
Will  Harold  yield  and  set  them  free  for  the  sake  of 
Edith  whom  he  loves  ?  He  is  touched  deeply.  Or 
for  the  sake  of  England  ? 

Harold :  Deeper  still. 

Wulfnoth  : 

And  deeper  still  the  deep-down  oubliette, 

Down  thirty  feet  below  the  smiling  day  — 

In  blackness  —  dogs'  food  thrown  upon  thy  head. 

And  over  thee  the  suns  arise  and  set, 

And  the  lark  sings,  the  sweet  stars  come  and  go, 

And  men  are  at  their  markets,  in  their  fields, 

And  woo  their  loves  and  have  forgotten  thee ; 

And  thou  art  upright  in  thy  living  grave, 

Where  there  is  barely  room  to  shift  thy  side.1 

In  this  passage,  as  generally  throughout  the  play,  the 
metrical  execution  is  superior  to  that  of  Queen  Mary. 
The  whole  piece,  indeed,  is  written  on  a  higher  poetic 
level ;  the  language  of  the  dialogues  and  speeches  has 
a  certain  grandeur  that  was  inadmissible  in  the  mouths 
of  the  sixteenth-century  notables,  who  were  obliged  to 
speak  by  the  book ;  and  the  portrait  of  a  noble  warrior 
and  patriot  king  is  romantically  enlarged  out  of  the 
dim  records  of  an  unlettered  age.  In  the  final  Act  we 
have  Harold  going  forth  to  the  battle,  the  meeting  of 
the  armies,  and  Edith  with  the  Saxon  bishop  watch- 
ing the  sway  of  a  well-matched  contest,  until  Harold 
falls  :  the  intense  excitement  of  the  situation  is  pow- 
erfully suggested.  The  visions  that  pass  through 
Harold's  dream  as  he  sleeps  in  his  tent  on  the  night 

1  Act  n.  Scene  ii. 


162  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

before  Senlac,  have  an  obvious  precedent  in  Shake- 
speare's Richard  III. ;  nor  is  the  chant  of  the  monks 
during  the  fight  quite  an  original  dramatic  invention, 
yet  they  are  both  skilfully  adapted  to  enhance  the 
impression  of  the  crisis.  But  the  concluding  speech 
of  William  the  Conqueror  over  the  bodies  of  Harold 
and  his  mistress,  Edith,  is  somewhat  marred  by  the 
introduction  of  a  moral  sentiment  that  sounds  too 
much  out  of  character  with  the  time  — 

William  :  Leave  them.     Let  them  be  1 

Bury  him  and  his  paramour  together. 
He  that  was  false  in  oath  to  me,  it  seems 
Was  false  to  his  own  wife.     We  will  not  give  him 
A  Christian  burial. 

And  possibly  Tennyson  did  not  at  the  moment  recol- 
lect that  William's  mother  had  been  just  such  another 
paramour  as  Edith. 

It  will  have  been  noticed  that  the  Trilogy  takes 
no  account  of  chronological  order.  If,  at  any  rate, 
the  play  of  Becket,  which  appeared  last  in  the  series, 
being  published  in  1884,  had  preceded  Queen  Mary, 
we  should  have  seen  the  first  beginning,  under 
the  Plantagenets,  of  the  quarrel  between  Rome  and 
the  English  State  which  came  to  a  final  breach 
under  the  Tudors.  The  Memoir  inserts  a  declaration 
of  the  late  Mr.  J.  E.  Green,  no  light  authority,  that 
all  his  researches  into  the  annals  of  the  twelfth 
century  had  not  given  him  so  vivid  a  conception 
of  the  character  of  Henry  II.  and  his  Court  as  was 
embodied  in  Tennyson's  Becket.  Whether  this  is 
a  superior  quality  in  historic  plays,  may  be  open  to 
argument;  and  at  any  rate  one  may  demur  respect- 
fully to  the  rule  laid  down  in  a  letter  written  on  this 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  163 

play  to  its  author  by  Mr.  Bryee,  that  "  truth  in  history 
is  naturally  truth  in  poetry."  1  For  accuracy  of  repro- 
duction, though  it  gratifies  the  realistic  demands  of  the 
present  time,  and  gives  pleasure  to  the  cultivated  reader, 
must  have  a  tendency  to  cramp  the  imaginative  free- 
dom that  wings  the  flight  of  dramatic  genius ;  and 
some  historical  plays  and  romances  of  the  first  order 
abound  with  inaccuracies.  Nevertheless  the  rule  may 
be  applicable  to  delineation  of  character ;  and  in  his 
two  principal  personages,  Henry  II.  and  Becket,  Ten- 
nyson has  embroidered  upon  the  historic  canvas  with 
force  and  fidelity.  The  subject  lends  itself  to  dramatic 
composition  by  providing  for  the  leading  personage  an 
ecclesiastical  hero,  the  Archbishop,  who  overtops  all 
the  others,  marking  the  central  line  of  interest  through- 
oat;  and  whose  violent  death  in  the  cause  that  he 
impersonates  supplies  a  fitly  tragic  ending  to  the  play. 
Then,  also,  the  story  of  Rosamond  and  Eleanor  provides 
just  the  romantic  element  of  secret  love  and  feminine 
vindictiveness  that  is  needed  to  soften  and  vary  the 
harsh  disputing,  the  interchange  of  threats  and  curses, 
between  priests  and  barons ;  and  to  Tennyson's  skill 
in  seizing  and  working  upon  these  points  of  vantage 
we  may  attribute  largely  the  success  of  this  piece 
upon  the  stage.  The  language,  as  in  Queen  Mary,  is 
sonorous  and  masculine,  the  dialogues  are  pointed  in 
thrust  and  parry ;  and  one  or  two  important  speeches 
have  a  stately  tone  well  suited  to  their  occasion. 

Henry : 

Barons  and  bishops  of  our  realm  of  England, 
After  the  nineteen  winters  of  King  Stephen  — 
A  reign  which  was  no  reign,  when  none  could  sit 
By  his  own  hearth  in  peace  ;  when  murder,  common 
1  Memoir. 


164  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

As  nature's  death,  like  Egypt's  plague,  had  filled 
All  things  with  blood,  when  every  doorway  blushed, 
Dashed  red  with  that  unhallowed  passover  ; 
When  every  baron  ground  his  blade  in  blood  ; 
The  household  dough  was  kneaded  up  in  blood ; 
The  mill-wheel  turned  in  blood,  the  wholesome  plow 
Lay  rusting  in  the  furrow's  yellow  weeds, 
Till  famine  dwarft  the  race  —  I  came,  your  king.1 

In  the  scene  where  Queen  Eleanor  has  tracked  Rosa- 
rnond  through  the  labyrinth  to  her  bower,  threatens 
to  kill  her,  and  offers  life  to  her  on  base  terms,  Rosa- 
mond, after  kneeling  for  mercy,  at  last  turns  upon  the 
Queen  and  replies  in  the  right  tragic  spirit  — 

Rosamond :  I  am  a  Clifford, 

My  son  a  Clifford  and  Plantagenet, 
I  am  to  die  then.  .  .  . 

Both  of  us  will  die. 

And  I  will  fly  with  my  sweet  boy  to  heaven, 
And  shriek  to  all  the  saints  among  the  stars  : 
Eleanor  of  Aquitaine,  Eleanor  of  England  1 
Murdered  by  that  adulteress  Eleanor, 
Whose  doings  are  a  horror  to  the  east, 
A  hissing  in  the  vrest.2 

It  is  a  play  that  won  not  only  the  cordial  commenda- 
tion of  scholars  and  men  of  letters,  but  also  popular 
applause,  and  the  foremost  of  our  English  theatrical 
artists  willingly  joined  in  giving  it  adequate  representa- 
tion; with  the  result  that  it  held  the  stage  beyond 
fifty  nights,  and  Sir  Henry  Irving  has  said  that  Becket 
is  one  of  the  three  successful  plays  produced  by  him 
at  the  Lyceum.  The  common  remark  that  Tennyson 
was  no  born  dramatist  cannot  be  gainsaid ;  he  was 
essentially  a  lyrical  poet ;  and  the  lyric  vein,  being 
1  Act  i.  Scene  iii.  2  Act  iv.  Scene  ii. 


vi.]  THE   PLAYS  165 

different  in  kind  and  charged  with  self-consciousness, 
has  to  be  suppressed  or  carefully  controlled  in  dramatic 
composition,  which  must  be  entirely  objective  and 
impersonal.  This  necessity  manifestly  presses  with 
peculiar  weight  upon  the  writer  of  plays  that  are 
intended  to  be  illustrations  of  authentic  history,  where 
the  limits  of  character-probability  have  to  be  observed; 
for  the  dramatist  could  not  put  fanciful  ideas  of  his 
own  into  the  mouth  of  Philip  of  Spain  or  Cranmer, 
and  must  curtail  his  lyrical  exuberance.  We  may 
therefore  admire  the  versatility  of  Tennyson's  powers 
in  the  restraint  which  he  placed  upon  his  natural  pro- 
pensity ;  his  plays  are  not  poems  in  his  own  manner 
arranged  dramatically,  like  Mr.  Swinburne's  Bothwell ; 
nor  are  they  romances  cut  up  into  dialogue  ;  they  are 
severe  and  strenuous  presentations  of  real  people  and 
well-known  events.  This  may  be  counted  both  as 
praise  and  dispraise ;  for  somehow  a  drama  that  is 
closely  tied  to  facts  lacks  universal  interest;  it  cannot 
rise  far  above  the  ground,  nor  attain  the  heights  that 
secure  for  it  a  permanent  place  in  the  national  litera- 
ture. Yet  if  Tennyson  has  not  succeeded  in  the 
arduous  and  probably  hopeless  enterprise  of  reviving 
the  historical  drama,  he  deserves  credit  and  sympathy 
for  attempting  it ;  and  he  has  set  an  example,  which 
is  being  followed  in  the  romantic  drama  by  a  younger 
poet  of  his  school  in  the  present  day,1  of  endeavouring 
to  stem  the  downward  current  of  deterioration  in  the 
taste  of  the  playgoing  public,  by  offering  them  plays 
of  fine  artistic  quality  and  form,  dealing  seriously 
with  momentous  events  and  deep  emotions,  at  a  time 
when  the  national  theatre  is  more  and  more  reduced  to 
i  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips. 


1G6  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

ringing  changes  upon  the  trivial  and  commonplace 
situations  of  ordinary  society. 

The  Promise  of  May  takes  very  different  ground. 
It  was  written  somewhat  unwillingly  (we  are  told  in 
the  Memoir)  "  at  the  importunate  entreaty  of  a  friend 
who  had  urged  Tennyson  to  try  his  hand  on  a  modern 
village  tragedy."  This  is  a  pastoral  play,  on  a  well- 
worn  theme  —  the  ruin  of  a  farmer's  pretty  daughter, 
who  has  been  captivated  by  the  superior  manners  and 
pretentious  talk  of  a  young  man  belonging  to  the 
class  of  gentlefolk.  When  he  appears  on  the  stage 
with  a  book  in  his  hand,  we  know  from  his  first  words 
what  is  coming ;  we  can  see  that  Tennyson  is  fetching 
another  blow  at  the  idol  of  materialism  — 

{Enter  Edgar,  reading^)  : 

This  author,  with  his  charm  of  simple  style 

And  close  dialectic,  all  but  proving  man 

An  automatic  series  of  sensations, 

Has  often  numbed  me  into  apathy 

Against  the  unpleasant  jolts  of  this  rough  road, 

That  breaks  off  short  into  the  abysses  —  made  me 

A  quietest,  taking  all  things  easily. 

The  conviction,  which  throughout  haunted  Tennyson, 
that  in  default  of  a  clear  and  certain  prospect  of 
immortality  a  man's  soul  may  be  lost  utterly,  that 
he  must  sink  into  sensuality,  and  cannot  indeed  be 
much  blamed  for  it  logically,  is  the  moral  exemplified 
in  this  play.  It  comes  out  in  Edgar's  excuse  for 
seducing  and  deserting  the  girl  — 

Edgar :  What  can  a  man  then  live  for  but  sensations, 
Pleasant  ones  ?     Men  of  old  could  undergo 
Unpleasant  for  the  sake  of  pleasant  ones 
Hereafter,  like  the  Moslem  beauties  waiting 


vi.]  THE   PLAYS  167 

To  clasp  their  lovers  by  the  golden  gates. 
For  me,  whose  cheerless  Houris  after  death 
Are  Night  and  Silence,  pleasant  ones  —  the  while, 
If  possible,  here,  to  crop  the  flower  and  pass. 
Farmer  Dobson :  Well,  I  never  'card  the  likes  of  that  afoor. 

Nor  has  any  one  else,  in  a  London  theatre.  We  have 
here  the  recurrent  idea  that  scientific  knowledge  saps 
and  destroys  the  basis  of  morality,  and  lets  loose  all 
the  unruly  affections  of  sinful  men.  Marriage  is  to 
Edgar  an  obsolete  tradition  — 

Edgar  :  When  the  man, 

The  child  of  evolution,  flings  aside 
His  swaddling  bands,  the  morals  of  his  tribe, 
He,  following  his  own  instincts  as  his  God, 
Will  enter  on  the  larger  golden  age  ; 
No  pleasure  there  tabooed. 

This  is  scarcely  a  persuasive  way  of  wooing  a  simple 
sweetheart,  and  Eva,  the  farmer's  daughter,  is  natur- 
ally puzzled,  while  Dobson,  Edgar's  rival,  is  mortally 
suspicious  of  him  ;  and  at  the  end  the  materialist  turns 
out  a  double-dyed  villain,  who  gets  off  much  too 
cheaply.  The  didactic  strain  is  evidently  out  of 
place  in  a  pastoral,  save  for  the  occasionally  comic 
effect  of  an  evolutionist  discoursing  among  bamboozled 
farmers  and  ploughmen  —  an  incongruous  figure, 
brought  in  to  be  battered.  And  the  thread  that 
holds  together  the  action  and  the  personages  is  too 
slight.  But  the  rural  scenery  and  the  talk  of  the 
peasantry  bring  out  Tennyson's  genuine  knowledge 
of  country  life,  and  this  part  of  the  dialogues  is,  as 
in  all  Tennyson's  plays,  alert  and  amusing.  On  its 
first  night  the  piece  was  received  in  a  contentious 
spirit  by  the  audience  at  The  Globe,  chiefly,  as  the 


168  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

Memoir  mentions,  because  it  had  been  advertised  as  an 
attack  against  Socialism  ;  "  the  public  had  mistaken  its 
purpose."  Yet  although  an  experienced  playwright 
declared  at  the  time  that  he  could  have  made  it  a 
signal  success,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  a  travesty 
of  moral  philosophy  (and,  to  be  theatrically  popular, 
it  must  be  travestied)  could  ever  have  helped  to  sus- 
tain Tennyson's  reputation  as  a  dramatic  author. 

The  other  minor  plays  of  Tennyson  are  of  a  different 
and  brighter  cast.  In  December  1879  The  Falcon 
was  produced  at  the  St.  James's  theatre,  and  held  the 
stage  sixty-seven  nights ;  it  is  a  mediaeval  love  story 
belonging  to  the  class  of  ingenious  fabliaux,  told  in 
the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio,  afterwards  used  by  La 
Fontaine,  and  lastly  •  arranged  by  Tennyson  as  a 
metrical  drama  in  one  scene.  Fanny  Kemble  likened 
it  to  one  of  A.  de  Musset's  light  pieces,  though  it  has 
not  his  sparkling  wit.  A  lady  makes  a  sudden  visit 
to  the  knight  who  has  been  vainly  wooing  her.  He 
must  offer  her  some  refreshment,  so  he  is  forced  to  kill 
his  favourite  falcon  to  provide  a  solitary  dish;  but 
she  had  come  to  demand  of  him  for  her  son  this  very 
bird ;  and  he  has  to  confess  that  she  has  eaten1  it. 
Such  a  sacrifice  to  love  so  touches  the  lady's  heart 
that  she  marries  him.  The  Cup,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  in  a  graver  vein,  expanded  from  a  story  by  Plutarch 
of  a  Galatian  lady  in  the  time  of  the  Roman  republic, 
who  escapes  a  forced  marriage  by  poisoning  herself 
and  a  Galatian  noble,  Synorix,  the  traitor  to  his 
country,  who  had  joined  the  conquering  Eomans  and 

1 "  Helas,  reprit  1'amant  infortune, 

L'Oiseau  n'estplus,  vous  en  avez  dine." 

(La  Fontaine.') 


vi.]  THE  PLAYS  169 

had  murdered  her  husband.  The  political  situation  of 
a  province  just  subdued  by  the  Kepublic  forms  a  good 
background  to  the  action  and  gives  it  verisimilitude, 
for  the  story  rings  true  as  an  incident  that  might  well 
have  happened  in  the  circumstances.  The  characters 
are  lightly  yet  distinctly  set,  with  the  strong  emotions 
poetically  expressed ;  and  when  we  learn  that  Irving 
with  the  best  English  actress  took  the  leading  parts, 
with  magnificently  decorative  scenery,  it  is  easy  to 
understand  why  The  Cup  had  the  longest  run  in 
England  of  all  Tennyson's  dramatic  pieces. 

Last  of  all,  The  Foresters  was  brought  out  on  the 
New  York  stage  in  1892,  when  it  received  a  hearty 
welcome  from  the  Americans,  for  whom  this  reminis- 
cence of  early  English  woods  and  wolds  may  have  come 
like  a  breath  of  fresh  air  to  their  crowded  rectangular 
streets.  This  play  has  the  advantage  of  keeping 
well  outside  authentic  history  ;  for  though  Tennyson 
wrote  of  it  that  he  had  "  sketched  the  state  of  the 
people  in  another  great  transition  period  of  the  mak- 
ing of  England,"  he  has  luckily  done  nothing  of  the 
kind,  but  has  given  us  the  famous  figures  of  popu- 
lar tradition,  handed  down  by  the  minstrels  and 
rhymers,  in  a  new  and  lively  dress.  Undoubtedly 
these  legends  reflect  the  feelings  and  sympathies  of  the 
English  people  at  a  time  when  the  great  midland 
forests  sheltered  bands  of  daring  men,  who  defied  the 
Norman  law  and  kept  up  a  sort  of  guerilla  against  the 
foreign  yoke ;  and  this  is  an  atmosphere  much  more 
favourable  to  a  romantic  woodland  drama  than  the 
climate  of  history.  The  introduction  of  Titania  with 
her  fairies  (suggested,  probably  for  scenic  effect,  by 
Irving)  is  a  somewhat  temerarious  device,  not  only  for 


170  TENNYSON  [CHAP.  vi. 

the  obvious  reason  that  they  have  been  created  once 
for  all  by  a  master-hand,  but  also  because  the  pure 
magical  touch  was  not  in  Tennyson  ;  nor  was  his  verse 
light  enough  for  fantastic  spriteliness,  or  his  playful- 
ness sufficiently  volatile. 

Titania :  I,  Titania,  bid  you  flit, 

And  you  dare  to  call  me  Tit. 
First  Fairy :  Tit  for  love  of  brevity, 
Not  for  love  of  levity. 
Titania :  Pertest  of  our  flickering  mob 

Wouldst  thou  call  my  Oberon  Ob  ? 

Moreover,  Thomas  Love  Peacock's  Maid  Marian,  with 
its  exquisite  snatches  of  song  and  ballad,  and  the 
richer  humour  of  its  dialogue,  had  already  traversed 
the  same  ground  in  prose.  But  at  the  end  of  The 
Foresters  Tennyson's  special  qualities  of  picturesque 
suggestion  and  reverie  come  out  in  the  dreamy 
melodious  lines  that  drop  the  curtain  on  a  vision  of 
primitive  romance. 

Marian  :    And  yet  I  think  these  oaks  at  dawn  and  even 
Will  whisper  evermore  of  Robin  Hood  ; 
We  leave  but  happy  memories  in  the  forest. 
******* 

You,  good  friar, 

You  Much,  you  Scarlet,  you  dear  Little  John, 
Your  names  will  cling  like  ivy  to  the  wood. 
And  here,  perhaps,  a  hundred  years  away, 
Some  hunter  in  day  dreams  or  half  asleep 
Will  hear  our  arrows  whizzing  overhead, 
And  catch  the  winding  of  a  phantom  horn. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   LAST    TEARS    AND    LATEST    POETRY  :    CONCLUSION 

IN  1883  a  peerage  was  offered  by  the  Queen  to 
Tennyson,  who  after  some  hesitation  consented,  under 
Gladstone's  advice,  to  accept  it.  He  took  his  seat,  the 
first  representative  in  the  House  of  Lords  of  a  purely 
literary  qualification,  in  1884;  and  in  the  same  year 
he  voted  for  the  Franchise  Bill,  having  stipulated  with 
Gladstone  and  obtained  a  pledge  that  a  Bill  for  the 
redistribution  of  constituencies  should  follow.  The 
measure  he  held  to  be  just  and  necessary,  though 
Gladstone  received  •  from  him  a  verse  of  warning 
against  setting  the  troubled  waters  of  politics  toward 
a  precipitate  channel.  Their  views  upon  public  affairs 
soon  afterward  fell  more  and  more  asunder ;  and  wo 
find  Tennyson  writing  that  he  loved  Gladstone,  but 
hated  his  Irish  policy ;  while  the  poet's  natural  dis- 
trust of  "  rash  innovators  "  shows  itself  repeatedly  in 
all  his  discourse  upon  the  constitutional  questions  of 
this  time. 

The  years  of  his  declining  life  were  passed  between 
his  two  country  houses,  with  excursions  into  the 
country,  visits  to  London,  and  occasional  cruises  in  a 
friend's  yacht.  He  received  old  friends  and  privi- 
leged guests  with  kindly  hospitality  ;  talked  on  poli- 
tics, religion,  and  poetry  ;  spoke  of  men  whom  he  had 

171 


172  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

known,  scenes  that  he  remembered,  and  books  that  he 
had  read ;  received  letters  out  of  all  lands,  and  replied 
to  some  of  them  with  epigrammatic  brevity.  He  was 
still  occupied  with  the  leisurely  composition  of  his 
later  poems. 

From  1885  Tennyson  had  published,  at  intervals, 
three  small  volumes  of  poems,  beside  Locksley  Hall 
Sixty  Years  After.  One  line  in  this  poem  its  author 
held  to  be  the  best  of  the  kind  that  he  had  ever 
written  — 

"  Universal  Ocean  softly  washing  all  her  warless  isles," 

though  it  is  full  of  the  sibilants  that  vex  all  English 
verse-makers ;  and  the  suggestion  that  the  sea  would 
become  calm  when  the  land  should  be  at  peace  may  be 
thought  logically  perplexing.  It  was  but  seasonable 
that  Tennyson's  latest  poetry  should  have  been  tinged 
with  autumnal  hues.  The  range 'of  his  mind  had  been 
widened  by  constant  assimilation  with  the  expansion 
of  scientific  knowledge,  and  by  long  experience  of  the 
world ;  but  as  far  horizons  often  produce  a  vague 
sadness,  so  his  retrospective  views  of  life,  as  he  turns 
back  and  surveys  it,  are  melancholy.  In  poetry  and 
in  prose  the  sequel  to  a  fine  original  piece,  written 
after  a  long  interval,  has  very  rarely,  if  ever,  been 
successful ;  though  the  second  part  is  often  valuable  to 
the  biographer  by  illustrating  the  alterations  of  style 
and  thought  that  follow  naturally  the  course  of  years. 
Tennyson  himself  said  that  "  the  two  Locksley  Halls 
were  likely  to  be  in  the  future  two  of  the  most 
historically  interesting  of  his  poems,  as  descriptive  of 
the  tone  of  the  age  at  two  distant  periods  of  his  life." 
But  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  interest  is  not 


vii.]         LAST   YEARS  AND   LATEST   POETRY  173 

rather  biographical  than  historical,  whether,  in  fact, 
the  change  of  tone  was  not  in  the  age,  but  in  Tenny- 
son himself.  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
interval  of  sixty  years,  over  which  the  aged  squire 
in  the  second  poem  looks  back  so  mournfully,  was  for 
the  English  people  a  period  of  active  and  eager  enter- 
prise, of  social  betterment  and  national  prosperity. 
The  grave  forebodings  of  the  poem,  the  sense  of  dis- 
may at  the  ills  of  mortality,  reflect  the  mood  of  the 
poet,  not  of  the  people.  He  would  probably  have 
replied  that  the  poem  was  a  dramatic  representation 
of  old  age,  and  he  disclaimed  any  identity  with  the 
portraits  of  his  imagination ;  but  it  is  impossible  for 
an  author  to  insist  positively  on  his  entire  personal 
detachment  from  his  poetic  impersonations  of  thought 
and  character.  The  choice  of  subject  and  its  treat- 
ment mark  unmistakably  the  dominant  ideas ;  nor 
can  an  essentially  lyrical  poet  give  fervid  expression 
to  any  feelings  but  his  own. 

On  the  whole,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  two  last 
volumes  fall  below  the  level  of  his  verse  at  its  prime  ; 
nor  could  one  expect  or  desire  that  after  threescore 
years  and  ten  a  poet's  age  should  not  affect  the  force 
and  fertility  of  his  writing  and  his  general  outlook  on 
life.  Some  of  these  late  poems  are  overweighted  with 
thought,  the  diction  is  too  emphatic,  the  colour  of  his 
meditations  takes  a  more  sombre  tinge  than  hereto- 
fore, and  a  certain  cloudiness  gathers  over  his  loftier 
utterances.  Yet  in  Demeter  and  Persephone  we  have 
still  the  delicate  handling,  the  self-restraint,  the  severe 
air  of  his  earlier  compositions.  The  ancient  allegory 
of  the  Earth  goddess,  the  figure  of  Nature  in  flower 
and  in  decay,  of  the  disappearance  and  return  of  the 


174  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

harvest,  is  finely  enlarged  into  the  moral  conception  of 
light  eventually  conquering  darkness,  of  Heaven  finally 
prevailing  over  the  sunless  halls  of  Hades.  The  lines 
subjoined  are  full  of  his  old  picturesque  charm  — 

11  Once  more  the  reaper  in  the  gleam  of  dawn 
Will  see  me  by  the  landmark  far  away 
Blessing  his  field,  or  seated  in  the  dusk 
Of  even,  by  the  lonely  threshing-floor, 
Rejoicing  in  the  Harvest  and  the  grange." 

And  one  well-known  passage  seems  to  connect,  by  a 
simile,  Demeter's  vision  of  her  daughter  with  telepathic 
intimations  —  one  of  those  obscure  psychical  phenom- 
ena which  have  recently  come  within  the  scope  of  scien- 
tific research  — 

"  Last,  as  the  likeness  of  a  dying  man, 
Without  his  knowledge,  flits  from  him  to  warn 
A  far-off  friendship  that  he  comes  no  more." 

The  passing  of  such  shadows  over  the  brain  is  well 
known  to  be  an  old  and  perplexing  experience ;  and 
Crabbe,  who  collected  the  legends  of  the  seashore, 
alludes  to  such  a  visitation  in  one  of  his  Tales. 

Of  Tiresias  some  mention  has"  already  been  made. 
Possibly  the  miscellaneous  character  of  these  pieces 
may  be  thought  to  do  some  damage  to  their  collective 
impressiveness,  by  suggesting  that  stray  leaves  may 
have  been  collected  and  appended  to  the  principal 
poem  in  each  volume.  "  Owd  Koa,"  a  story  of  a  dog, 
told  in  Lincolnshire  dialect  that  cannot  be  understood 
without  a  glossary,  becomes  wearisome  in  more  than 
sixty  stanzas ;  the  more  so  because,  being  placed  in  the 
latest  complete  edition  between  Demeter  and  Vastness, 


vii.]         LAST   YEARS   AND   LATEST   POETRY  175 

it  finds  the  reader  unprepared  for  such  abrupt  alterna- 
tions of  style  and  subject.  No  one,  as  has  been  said, 
would  count  it  unnatural  or  unbecoming  that  in  many 
of  these  poems  the  shade  which  perpetually  hung  over 
Tennyson's  brooding  mind  should  have  become  darker 
in  the  late  evening  of  his  days.  His  sympathy  with 
human  unhappiness  repeatedly  shows  itself  in  such 
pieces  as  Forlorn,  The  Leper's  Bride,  Romney's  Re- 
morse, The  Ring,  The  Bandit's  Death,  —  all  of  which 
exhibit  the  sorrowful  sides  of  life,  and  illustrate 
patience  in  suffering,  repentance,  or,  in  one  instance, 
revenge.  In  the  poem  of  Forlorn,  where  a  mother 
adjures  her  daughter  not  to  marry  without  confess- 
ing to  her  lover  a  long-past  frailty,  the  tone  is  too 
vehement;  and  the  same  subject  has  been  more 
emotionally  handled  in  one  of  George  Meredith's 
earliest  poems,  Margaret's  Bridal  Eve ;  where  the 
mother  disregards  moral  scruples,  and  takes  the  more 
natural  part  of  urging  the  girl  to  conceal  her  fault ; 
but  she  confesses,  is  renounced  by  the  lover,  and  dies. 
Of  the  two  versions  one  must  prefer  that  of  Meredith, 
who  strikes  a  superior  keynote,  and  creates  the  right 
tragic  situation  by  throwing  the  strain  of  conscience  and 
the  merit  of  self-sacrifice  entirely  upon  the  daughter. 
The  same  gloominess  of  atmosphere  overhangs  The 
Death  of  CEnone.  The  beautiful  mountain-nymph  of 
Tennyson's  youth,  passionately  lamenting  her  deser- 
tion iipon  Mount  Ida,  has  now  become  soured  and 
vindictive ;  she  is  a  resentful  wife  to  whom  Paris, 
dying  from  the  poisoned  arrow,  crawls  "  lame,  crooked, 
reeling,  livid,  through  the  mist,"  imploring  her  to  heal 
him.  CEnone  spurns  him  as  an  adulterer  who  may 
"  go  back  to  his  adulteress  and  die  " ;  yet  at  his  death 


176  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

she  throws  herself  into  the  flames  of  his  pyre.  Tenny- 
son said  that  he  considered  this  poem  even  more 
strictly  classical  in  form  and  language  than  the  old 
(Enone.  To  some  of  us,  nevertheless,  it  may  seem 
that  its  tone  of  stern  reprobation  jars  with  the  style 
and  feeling  of  antique  Hellenic  tradition.  The  stoiy 
is  taken  from  a  short  passage  in  a  late  Greek  writer ; l 
and  we  may  remember  that  in  Homer  the  adulteress 
Helen  is  found  living  happily  and  honourably  after 
the  war  with  her  husband  in  Sparta.  And  Tenny- 
son's propensity  to  enforce  grave  moral  lessons  has 
led  him  to  lay  the  lash  so  heavily  on  Paris  as  to  dis- 
parage (Enone  and  provoke  compassion  for  the  sinner. 
The  spirituality  of  the  East,  whence  all  great  reli- 
gions of  the  world  have  originated,  had  a  strong  attrac- 
tion for  his  meditative  temperament ;  but  he  never 
threw  its  deeper  philosophy  into  concrete  form,  though 
he  sketched  the  beginning  of  a  poem  upon  Ormuzd 
and  Ahriman,  the  Manichsean  spirits  of  good  and  evil. 
Akbar's  Dream,  the  single  study  made  by  Tennyson 
of  an  authentic  Asiatic  figure,  does  indeed  embody 
the  lofty  ideal  of  an  eclectic  Faith  transcending  for- 
malism, sectarian  intolerance,  and  the  idols  of  the 
crowd,  and  seeking  for  some  spacious  theology  that 
shall  comprehend  the  inner  significance  and  aspirations 
of  all  external  worships.  Akbar,  however,  was  not, 
could  not  be,  a  great  spiritual  leader  of  men ;  he  was 
a  large-minded  politic  emperor  ruling  over  manifold 
races  and  conflicting  creeds ;  and  he  himself  foresaw 
that  his  eclectic  system  could  not  take  root  or  endure. 
This  general  conception  of  his  character  and  position 
is  drawn  in  grand  outline,  though  the  subject  is  too 
1  Apollodorus. 


vn. J         LAST  YEARS  AND  LATEST  POETRY  177 

large  for  so  short  a  poem ;  and  the  concluding  Hymn 
to  the  Sun  is  a  majestic  song  of  praise  — 

"  Adoring  Him  the  Timeless  in  the  flame  that  measures  Time." 

The  last  poem  that  Tennyson  finished  was  The 
Dreamer,  who  hears  in  his  sleep  the  wail  of  the  Earth 
rolling  through  space,  the  mournful  music  of  a  sphere 
oppressed  by  the  burden  of  the  sins  and  misfortunes 
of  the  race  whom  it  is  bearing  along,  helpless  and  un- 
willing, to  an  uncertain  destiny.  The  poet  endeavours 
to  cheer  our  disconsolate  planet  by  the  assurance  that 

"  All's  well  that  ends  well, 

Whirl  and  follow  the  Sun," 

which  may  be  understood  allegorically  as  of  hope  in 
the  Light  that  leads. 

The  Death  of  (Enone  and  Akbar's  Dream,  with 
other  minor  pieces,  are  in  the  volume  which  closed, 
in  1892,  the  long  series  of  poems  that  had  held  two 
generations  under  their  charm.  Throughout  that 
period,  almost  equal  in  length  to  Queen  Victoria's 
reign,  Tennyson  maintained  his  foremost  place  among 
the  Victorian  poets ;  and  although  one  can  mark  the 
slow  decline  of  a  genius  that  had  reached  its  zenith 
fifty  years  before  death  extinguished  it,  yet  hardly 
any  English  poet  has  so  long  retained  power,  or  has 
published  so  little  that  might  have  been  omitted  with 
benefit  to  his  permanent  reputation.  Nor  will  it  ever 
be  forgotten  that  in  his  eighty-first  year  he  wrote 
Crossing  the  Bar,  where  the  noiseless  indraw  of  the 
ebb-tide  from  the  land  back  into  the  ocean  is  a  mag- 
nificent image  of  the  soul's  quiet  parting  from  life  on 
earth  and  its  absorption  into  the  vastness  of  infinity. 


178  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

It  is  apparent  from  the  Memoir,  at  any  rate,  that 
the  weight  of  more  than  fourscore  years  depressed 
none  of  Tennyson's  interest  in  literature  and  art,  in 
political  and  philosophic  questions ;  nor  did  it  slacken 
his  enjoyment  of  humorous  observation  or  anecdote. 
Among  many  recollections  he  told  of  Hallam  (the 
historian)  saying  to  him,  "  I  have  lived  to  read  Car- 
lyle's  French  Revolution,  but  I  cannot  get  on  with  it, 
the  style  is  so  abominable  "  ;  and  of  Carlyle  groaning 
over  Hallam's  Constitutional  History,  "  Eh,  it's  a  mis- 
erable skeleton  of  a  book  "  —  which  brings  out  into 
summary  comparison  two  opposite  schools  of  history- 
writing,  the  picturesque  and  the  precise.  He  praised 
Carlyle's  honesty,  but  said  that  he  knew  nothing 
about  poetry  or  art.  He  told  how  the  sage  of  Chelsea 
once  came  to  smoke  a  pipe  with  him  one  evening  in 
London,  when  the  talk  turned  upon  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  and  Carlyle  said,  "  Eh,  old  Jewish  rags, 
you  must  clear  your  mind  of  all  that,"  and  likened 
man's  sojourn  on  earth  to  a  traveller's  rest  at  an  inn; 
whereupon  Tennyson  rejoined  that  the  traveller  knew 
whither  he  was  bound,  and  where  he  should  sleep  on 
the  night  following.  FitzGerald,  who  was  present, 
might  have  quoted  to  them  his  own  stanza  from  Omar 
Khayyam,  which  gives  the  true  inner  meaning  of  the 
famous  parable  of  the  dervish  who  insisted  on  taking 
up  his  quarters  in  the  king's  palace,  which  he  declared 
to  be  nothing  more  than  a  caravanserai.1 

Robert  Browning's   death   in   December  1889   dis- 

i  "  "Tis  but  a  tent  where  takes  his  one  day's  rest 
A  Sultan  to  the  realm  of  Death  addrest ; 
The  Sultan  rises,  and  the  dark  Ferrash 
Strikes,  and  prepares  it  for  another  guest." 


vii.]         LAST   YEARS   AND   LATEST  POETRY  179 

tressed  him  acutely  ;  it  was  a  forewarning  to  the  elder 
of  two  brothers  in  verse  for  whom  posterity  must 
decide  whether  they  are  to  be  equals  in  renown.  "  A 
great  thinker  in  verse,"  Tennyson  said  of  him;  and 
again,  "  He  has  plenty  of  music  in  him,  but  cannot 
get  it  out ;  he  has  intellect  enough  for  a  dozen  of  us, 
but  he  has  not  got  the  glory  of  words."  Their  dis- 
tinctive styles  and  qualities  are  so  well  marked  that 
each  poet  sets  the  other  in  relief ;  and  the  generation 
that  had  two  such  interpreters  is  singularly  fortunate. 
In  the  junior  poets  of  his  later  day  he  took  a  sympathetic 
interest.  He  wrote  kindly  to  Rudyard  Kipling,  whose 
patriotic  verse  pleased  him,  and  to  William  Watson, 
who  twelve  months  later  paid  a  grateful  tribute  to  his 
memory  in  one  of  the  best  among  many  threnodies. 

His  last  residence  at  Farringford  was  in  the  spring 
and  early  summer  of  1892,  when  he  made  a  yachting 
voyage  to  the  Channel  Islands;  and  by  the  autumn 
he  was  at  Aldworth  in  Surrey.  Lord  Selborne  and  the 
Master  of  Baliiol  visited  him,  but  he  told  Jowett  that 
he  was  not  strong  enough  for  the  usual  discussions 
between  them  on  religion  and  philosophy.  Jowett 
answered,  "  Your  poetry  has  an  element  of  philosophy 
more  to  be  considered  than  any  regular  philosophy  in 
England,"  which  might  be  interpreted  as  an  ambiguous 
and  possibly  not  an  extravagant  compliment. 

The  final  chapter  of  the  Memoir  gives  briefly  some 
of  his  latest  sayings,  and  describes  a  peaceful  and 
noble  ending.  He  found  his  Christianity  undisturbed 
by  contentious  sects  and  creeds,  but,  he  said,  "  I  dread 
the  losing  of  forms  ;  I  have  expressed  this  in  my 
Akbar."  When,  at  the  end  of  September  1892,  he 
fell  seriously  ill,  and  Sir  Andrew  Clarke  arrived,  the 


180  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

physician  and  his  patient  fell  to  discussing  Gray's 
Elegy ;  and  a  few  days  later,  although  he  had  become 
much  worse,  he  sent  for  his  Shakespeare,  but  he  was 
obliged  to  let  his  son  read  to  him.  Next  day  he  said, 
"  I  want  the  blinds  up ;  I  want  to  see  the  sky  and  the 
light."  It  was  a  glorious  morning,  and  the  warm 
sunshine  was  flooding  the  Sussex  weald  and  the  line 
of  the  South  Downs,  which  he  could  see  from  his 
window.  He  lay  with  his  hand  resting  on  his  Shake- 
speare, unable  to  read ;  and  after  midnight  on  the  6th 
October  he  passed  away  very  quietly.  The  funeral 
service  in  Westminster  Abbey,  with  its  two  anthems 
—  Crossing  the  Bar  and  The  Silent  Voices  —  fill- 
ing the  long-drawn  aisles  and  rising  to  the  fretted  vault 
above  the  heads  of  a  great  congregation,  will  long  be 
remembered  by  those  who  were  present.  His  pleasant 
and  prosperous  life  had  been  varied  by  few  griefs  or 
troubles ;  he  had  attained  signal  success  in  the  high 
calling  that  he  had  set  before  himself ;  he  had  won 
honour  and  fame  among  all  English-speaking  peoples, 
and  he  departed  at  the  coming  of  the  time  when  no 
man  can  work. 

A  comparison  of  Tennyson  with  Browning  has 
already  been  touched  upon.  Browning's  obscurity, 
when  he  was  engaged  upon  his  minute  mental  anat- 
omy, his  manner  of  leaving  his  thoughts  rough- 
hewn,  are  points  of  contrast  with  Tennyson's  clear 
and  chiselled  phrasing;  we  have  less  light  as  we  go 
deeper.  The  truth  is  that  Browning's  psychologic 
studies  are  too  diffuse  and  discursive  for  the  compact 
and  vivid  treatment  that  is  essential  to  poetry.  And 
the  peculiarity  of  his  genius  —  the  strain  and  hard 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  181 

service  that  he  imposed  upon  the  English  tongue  — 
place  him  to  some  extent  outside  the  right  apostolic 
succession,  in  its  direct  line,  of  our  national  poets,  of 
those  who  have  enlarged  the  capacity  of  our  language 
for  imaginative  and  musical  expression,  without  sub- 
jecting the  instrument  to  rough  usage.  Among  these 
Tennyson  may  certainly  be  counted.  To  lay  stress 
upon  the  metrical  variety  of  his  poems,  upon  his  ex- 
periments in  classical  prosody,  or  upon  his  development 
of  the  resources  of  the  language  for  harmony,  would 
be  to  repeat  what  has  been  frequently  said  by  others. 
It  may  be  questioned  whether  he  could  give  his 
rhythm  the  swift  movement,  as  of  a  thoroughbred  racer 
on  turf,  that  is  produced  by  Mr.  Swinburne  in  some  of 
his  most  elaborate  compositions,  where  the  accent  and 
the  quantity  fall  together;  nor  had  he  the  resonant 
organ-notes  of  Milton  when  he  was  playing  a  sym- 
phony upon  the  open  vowels.  Yet  his  power  of 
smoothing  down  linguistic  harshness  and  difficulties 
was  remarkable ;  and  his  skill  in  the  arrangement  of 
words  to  connote  physical  sensations  has  been  already 
mentioned.  His  command  over  the  long,  flowing  line, 
which  no  poet  before  him  had  used  so  frequently, 
gave  it  the  flexibility  that  served  him  well  in  such 
pieces  as  The  Northern  Farmer,  where  the  broad 
dialect  required  free  play;  while  in  other  poems  he 
could  give  this  metre  the  sounding  roll  of  a  chant 
or  a  chorus.  On  the  instrumental  resources  of  blank 
verse  we  know  that  he  set  the  highest  value.  "  Blank 
verse,"  he  said  once,  "can  be  the  finest  mode  of 
expression  in  our  language  " ;  he  had  his  own  secrets 
of  arranging  and  diversifying  it ;  and  all  the  latest 
composers  in  this  essentially  English  metre  have 


182  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

profited  by  his  lessons.  But  for  a  thorough  analysis 
of  Tennyson's  management  of  blank  verse,  in  com- 
parison with  the  other  masters  of  the  art,  the  student 
must  again  be  referred  to  Mr.  J.  B.  Mayor's  "  Chap- 
ters on  English  Metre,"  where  the  styles  of  Tennyson 
and  Browning,  as  representatives  of  modern  English 
versification,  are  critically  examined. 

It  will  have  been  seen  that  some  attempt  has  been 
made  in  these  pages  to  combine  a  short  biography  of 
Tennyson  with  a  running  commentary  on  his  poems, 
as  they  illustrate  his  intellectual  habit  and  the  circum- 
stances of  his  life.  And  to  some  extent  the  result 
accords  with  Taine's  generalising  treatment  of  litera- 
ture as  a  bundle  of  documents  that  reveal  and  record 
the  conditions,  social  and  climatic,  moral  and  material, 
in  which  it  was  produced,  and  thus  elucidate  history. 
Yet  in  the  case  of  a  writer  who  is  almost  our  con- 
temporary, this  analytical  method  is  too  easy  to  be 
of  much  importance,  for  there  is  an  obvious  and 
necessary  correspondence  between  his  work  and  his 
world;  the  man  and  his  milieu  are  both  well  known 
to  us ;  the  characteristics  are  those  of  his  class  and 
his  nation ;  we  have  only  to  put  together  causes  and 
effects  that  show  manifestly  the  correlation  between 
the  environment  and  its  product.  Among  the  signs 
of  his  time  may  be  noticed,  in  particular,  the  influence 
on  his  poetry  of  the  scientific  spirit,  the  growth  of 
accurate  habits  of  observation,  the  demand  for  exacti- 
tude in  details,  for  minute  delineation  of  accessories, 
for  a  patient  study  of  small  things  ;  the  spirit,  in  fact, 
which  has  affected  art  and  literature  in  the  form  of 
what  is  now  called  realism.  No  poet  has  been  more 
solicitous  than  Tennyson  about  precision  in  his  land- 


viz.]  CONCLUSION  183 

scape  painting,  or  more  carefully  correct  in  his  allusions 
to  animals  and  plants  ;  and  in  most  instances  the  pre- 
cision of  fact  strengthens  the  ornamental  form,  like  a 
solid  building  architecturally  decorated.  Burke,  in  his 
treatise  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  observes  that 
"  there  are  reasons  in  nature  why  the  obscure  idea, 
when  properly  conveyed,  should  be  more  affecting  in 
poetry  than  the  clear";  but  in  Tennyson's  verse  the 
exactitude  has  in  no  way  detracted  from  its  beauty. 
And  his  metaphors  are  much  more  than  figures  of  style ; 
they  very  often  do  really  intensify  a  vivid  sensation. 
Yet  the  scientific  impulse  carries  him  too  far  when 
experimental  physics  are  made  to  furnish  a  metaphor 
for  unbearable  emotion — 

"Break,  thou  deep  vase  of  chilling  tears, 
That  grief  has  shaken  into  frost." 

We  have  to  understand  that  at  a  certain  low  tempera- 
ture water,  if  shaken,  will  expand  into  ice  and  break 
the  vessel  that  contains  it ;  and  so  a  heart  that  is 
benumbed  with  grief  will  be  rent  if  it  is  agitated  by  a 
too  painful  recollection.  We  may  admire  the  technical 
skill  that  has  compressed  all  this  into  two  short  lines  ; 
but  the  metaphor  is  too  ingenious,  and  the  effort  of 
seizing  the  analogy  undoubtedly  checks  our  sensibility 
to  the  poet's  distress.  He  is  much  more  in  his  true 
poetical  element  when  he  returns  to  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  mystery  that  no  scientific  research  can 
penetrate  or  unravel,  when  he  plucks  the  flower  in  the 
crannied  wall  — 

"  If  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is." 


184  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

"  Toute  1'immensite  traverse  1'humble  fleur  du  pen- 
seur  contemple'e,"  says  Victor  Hugo;  the  microscope 
and  telescope,  the  vast  prospects  and  retrospects  thrown 
open  to  us  by  Science,  still  leave  the  world  no  less  an 
unintelligible  enigma  than  before.  Between  mythology 
and  science,  between  the  capricious  elemental  divinities 
and  the  conception  of  fixed  mechanical  laws,  we  travel 
from  the  earliest  to  the  latest  stages  of  man's  perpetual 
endeavour  to  decipher  the  secrets  of  nature.  The  myths 
have  always  lent  themselves  to  poetry,  which  indeed 
may  be  said  to  have  created  them ;  and  Tennyson  has 
given  new  form  and  moral  significance  to  some  of  the 
ancient  fables.  But  his  imaginative  faculty  was  also 
applied  to  the  metaphysical  problems  which  lie  beyond 
the  range  of  discovery ;  and  he  has  treated  the  laws  of 
nature  as  the  index  and  intimations  of  the  infinite 
Power  that  moves  somewhere  behind  them.  Whatever 
may  be  said  of  him  as  a  philosopher,  it  may  be  granted 
that  in  this  region  of  ideas  he  has  produced  some 
splendid  poetry,  and  has  illustrated  the  questioning 
spirit  of  his  age.  In  the  latest  poems  his  dismay  at 
the  pettiness  of  man's  part  and  place  in  the  cosmic 
evolution,  at  the  vision  of  a  godless  ocean  sapping 
and  swallowing  up  all  definite  beliefs,  seems  to  have 
gradually  quieted  down  into  the  conviction  that  a 
higher  and  purified  existence  surely  awaits  us.  Such 
short  pieces  as  Doubt  and  Prayer,  Faith,  The  Silent 
Voices,  and  others  in  the  small  volume  of  1892,  are 
passing  Thoughts  versified,  like  the  Gnomic  sentences 
in  prose  of  Pascal  or  Joubert.  Their  tone  is  generally 
hopeful  and  devout ;  and  the  Silent  Voices  of  the  dead 
call  him 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  185 

"Forward  to  the  starry  track, 
Glimmering  up  the  height  beyond  me, 
On,  and  always  on." 

In  Wordsworth's  famous  Ode  the  celestial  light  is 
behind  us,  and  slowly  fades  into  the  light  of  common 
day  — 

"  Whither  has  fled  the  visionary  gleam  ?" 

We  look  back  at  "the  immortal  sea  which  brought  us 
hither."  In  Tennyson's  poem  of  Merlin  and  the  Gleam 
the  light  is  in  front  of  us  across  the  great  water  — 

"There  on  the  border 
Of  boundless  Ocean, 
And  all  but  in  Heaven 
Hovers  the  Gleam." 

If,  again,  we  descend  from  these  spheres  of  lofty 
speculation,  and  turn  to  the  positive  and  practical 
aspects  of  Tennyson's  poetry,  we  may  allow  that  it 
undoubtedly  represents  the  ideas  and  tastes,  the 
inherited  predilections,  the  prevailing  currents  of 
thought,  of  Englishmen  belonging  to  his  class  and  his 
generation.  Moderation  in  politics,  refined  culture, 
religious  liberalism,  chequered  by  doubt,  a  lively 
interest  in  the  advance  of  scientific  discovery  coiipled 
with  alarm  lest  it  might  lead  us  astray,  attachment  to 
ancient  institutions,  larger  views  of  the  duty  of  the 
State  towards  its  people,  and  increasing  sympathy 
with  poverty  and  distress  —  all  these  feelings  and 
tendencies  find  their  expression  in  Tennyson's  poems, 
and  will  be  recognised  as  the  salient  features  of  the 
national  character.  In  the  direction  of  political  ideals 
his  imaginative  faculty  enabled  him  sometimes  not 


186  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

only  to  discern  the  movement,  but  also  to  lead  the 
way.  The  imperial  conception — realising  the  British 
empire's  unity  in  multiplicity,  regarding  it  as  a  deep- 
rooted  tree  which  sustains  and  nourishes  its  flourishing 
branches,  while  the  branches  in  return  give  support 
and  vitality  to  the  stem — was  proclaimed  in  his  verse 
before  it  had  attained  its  present  conspicuous  popu- 
larity. He  saw  that  the  edifice  had  been  quietly  set 
up  by  builders  who  made  no  noise  over  their  work; 
and  he  called  upon  all  English-speaking  folk  to  join 
hands  and  consolidate  it.  The  revival  and  spread  of 
profound  veneration  for  the  Throne,  as  the  common 
centre  and  head  of  a  scattered  dominion,  is  another 
outcome  of  the  same  idea  that  owes  its  development 
to  the  last  thirty  years  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign ;  and 
some  share  in  promoting  it  may  fairly  be  attributed  to 
the  Laureate's  stately  verse.  In  all  these  respects, 
therefore,  it  will  be  right  for  the  future  historian  to 
treat  Tennyson  as  a  representative  of  the  Victorian 
period,  and  to  draw  inferences  from  his  work  as  to  the 
general  intellectual  and  political  tendencies  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Yet  a  single  writer  can  at  most 
only  present  particular  aspects  of  a  general  view, 
coloured  and  magnified  in  poetry  for  the  purposes  of 
his  art,  and  refracted  through  the  medium  of  his  own 
individuality,  which  is  always  strong  in  men  of  great 
genius,  who  are  apt  to  survey  their  woi'ld  from 
different  standpoints,  and  often  to  take  opposite  sides, 
as  in  the  instance  of  Byron  and  Scott.  It  could  there- 
fore be  of  little  advantage  to  enlarge  further  upon  this 
theory  in  a  biography. 

In  the  domain  of  pure  literature  it  is  less  difficult 
to  measure   Tennyson's   influence,  and  to  define  his 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  187 

position,  so  far  as  one  may  venture  upon  doing  so  within 
a  few  years  of  his  death.  One  can  perceive,  looking 
backward,  that  his  genius  flowered  in  due  season; 
there  had  been  a  plentiful  harvest  of  verse  in  the 
preceding  generation,  but  it  had  been  garnered,  and 
the  ground  was  clear.  About  this  time  English 
poetry  had  relapsed  into  one  of  those  intervals  of 
depression  that  precede  a  fresh  rise ;  the  popular  taste 
was  artificial  and  decadent,  running  down  to  the 
pseudo-romantic  and  conventional  forms,  to  a  false 
note  of  sentiment  and  to  affectation  in  style.'  The  hour 
had  come  for  the  man  who  could  take  up  the  bequest 
of  that  brilliant  and  illustrious  group  who,  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  century,  raised  English  poetry  to  a 
height  far  above  the  classic  elegance  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  beyond  the  domestic,  nature-loving,  verse 
of  Cowper  and  Crabbe.  A  new  impulse  was  needed 
to  lift  it,  and  to  break  in  upon  the  dulness  that  seems 
just  then  to  have  settled  down,  like  a  passing  cloud, 
upon  every  form  of  art.  This  flat  and  open  space 
gave  Tennyson  a  fair  start  upon  the  course,  and 
favoured  the  recognition  of  his  superiority ;  although 
his  general  popularity  must  have  spread  gradually, 
since  we  have  seen  that  even  in  1850,  when  the  choice 
of  a  new  Laureate  had  to  be  made,  his  claim  was  not 
admitted  without  deliberation  in  high  political  quar- 
ters. Yet  all  genuine  judges  had  already  found  in 
Tennyson  the  poet  who  could  revive  again  the  imag- 
inative power  of  verse,  who  possessed  the  spell  that 
endows  with  beauty  and  artistic  precision  the  incidents 
and  impressions  which  a  weaker  hand  can  only  repro- 
duce in  vague  outline,  or  tamely ;  while  the  master  is 
both  luminous  and  accurate.  His  first  welcome  was 


188  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

in  the  acclamation  of  his  contemporaries ;  and  herein 
lay  the  promise  of  his  poetry,  for  to  the  departing 
generation  the  coining  man  has  little  to  say.  During 
Tennyson's  youth  the  whole  complexion  and  "  moving 
circumstance"  of  the  age  had  undergone  a  great 
alteration.  It  was  the  uproar  and  martial  clang, 
the  drums  and  trampling  of  the  long  war  against 
France,  the  mortal  strife  between  revolutionary  and 
reactionary  forces,  that  kindled  the  fiery  indignation 
of  Shelley  and  Byron,  and  affected  Coleridge  and 
even  Wordsworth,  "  in  their  hot  youth,  when  George 
the  Third  was  king."  Tennyson's  opportunity  arrived 
when  these  thunderous  echoes  had  died  away,  when 
the  Reform  Bill  had  become  law,  and  when  the  era 
of  peace  in  Europe  and  comfortable  prosperity  in 
England,  that  marks  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  had  just  set  in.  This  change  in  the  temper 
of  the  times  is  reflected  in  his  poetry ;  the  wild  and 
stormy  element  has  disappeared ;  his  impressions  of 
the  earth,  sea,  and  sky  are  mainly  peaceful,  melan- 
choly, mysterious  ;  he  is  looking  on  the  happy  autumn 
fields,  or  listening  in  fancy  to  the  ripple  of  the  brook, 
or  the  plash  of  a  quiet  sea. 

Length  of  life,  maturity  of  experience,  abundant 
leisure,  and  domestic  happiness  must  also  be  reckoned 
among  the  tranquillising  influences  that  have  imparted 
the  charms  of  equanimity,  self-restraint,  and  exquisite 
finish  to  the  best  of  Tennyson's  poetry. 

In  1890  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  who  was  Tenny- 
son's junior  by  only  twenty-three  days,  wrote  to  him :  — 

"I  am  proud  of  my  birth  year,  and  humbled  when  I 
think  of  who  were  and  who  are  my  coevals.  Darwin,  the 
destroyer  and  creator;  Lord  Houghton,  the  pleasant  and 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  189 

kind-hearted  lover  of  men  of  letters;  Gladstone,  whom  I 
leave  it  to  you  to  characterise,  but  whose  vast  range  of 
intellectual  powers  few  will  question ;  Mendelssohn,  whose 
music  still  rings  in  our  ears;  and  the  Laureate,  whose 
'jewels  five  words  long'  —  many  of  them  a  good  deal 
longer  —  sparkle  in  our  memories."1 

This  is  a  brilliant  constellation  of  talents  to  have  shot 
up  out  of  a  single  year  (1809) ;  and  the  lives  of  all 
these  men,  except  Mendelssohn,  were  long ;  they  had 
full  scope  for  their  various  capacities.  But  among 
Tennyson's  precursors  in  the  poetic  arena  three  leaders 
had  died  young  in  the  foremost  ranks,  Byron,  Shelley, 
and  Keats  :  two  of  them  in  the  midst  of  feverish  activ- 
ity, they  were  all  cut  off  suddenly  and  prematurely.  The 
sum-total  of  their  years  added  together  exceeds  by  no 
more  than  eleven  the  number  that  were  allotted  to 
Tennyson's  account.  And  if  the  productive  period  of 
a  poet's  life  may  be  taken  to  begin  at  twenty-one 
(which  is  full  early),  it  sums  up  to  about  thirty-one 
years  for  all  these  three  poets,  and  to  above  sixty 
years  for  Tennyson  alone.  By  the  time  that  Coleridge 
was  twenty-six  he  had  produced  (we  are  told  ^  all  the 
poetry  by  which  he  will  be  remembered,  and  critics 
*have  declared  that  Wordsworth  did  all  his  good  work 
in  the  decade  between  1798  and  1808.  It  was  Tenny- 
son's good  fortune  not  only  to  reach  a  greater  age 
than  any  other  poet  of  his  century,  but  also  to  sustain 
the  excellence  of  his  verse  for  a  longer  period. 
Wordsworth,  indeed,  lived  and  wrote  up  to  old  age ; 
and  in  him,  as  in  Tennyson,  we  have  the  contemplative 
humour,  the  balance  of  mind  swaying  occasionally 

1  Memoir. 

2  Coleridge,  by  H.  D.  Traill  ("  Men  of  Letters  "  series). 


190  TENNYSON  [CHAP. 

between  cheerfulness  and  dejection,  that  is  natural 
to  men  who  are  passing  quietly  through  all  the 
stages  of  life.  Nor  should  we  forget  that  each  of  them 
was  most  fortunate  in  the  affection  of  his  family  and 
in  a  well-ordered  home;  while  Byron  and  Shelley 
were  incessantly  at  war  with  society,  and  Coleridge's 
matrimonial  venture  brought  him  nothing  but  vexa- 
tion and  embarrassment. 

Tennyson's  face  and  demeanour,  which  have  been 
preserved  in  the  fine  portraits  of  him  by  Watts  and 
Millais,  were  so  remarkable,  that  at  the  first  sight  one 
took  the  impression  of  unusual  dignity  and  intellectual 
distinction.  His  voice,  gesture,  and  bearing  imperson- 
ated, so  to  speak,  his  character  and  reputation;  his 
appearance  fulfilled  the  common  expectation  (so  often 
disappointed)  of  perceiving  at  once  something  singular 
and  striking  in  the  presence  of  a  celebrity.  Jowett 
wrote  of  him  after  his  death  that  he  was  a  magnificent 
man  who  stood  before  you  in  his  native  refinement 
and  strength,  and  that  the  unconventionality  of  his 
manners  was  in  keeping  with  the  originality  of  his 
figure.  He  enjoyed  his  well-earned  fame  and  the 
tokens  of  enthusiastic  admiration  that  came  to  him 
from  near  and  far ;  he  listened  to  applause  with 
straightforward  complacency.  From  the  sensitiveness 
to  which  the  race  of  poets  is  proverbially  liable  he  was 
not  free ;  and  there  are  passages  in  his  poetry  which 
indicate  a  shrinking  anticipation  of  the  inquest  that  is 
now  held  over  a  notable  man  immediately  after  his 
death,  to  scrutinise  his  private  life,  and  to  satiate 
public  curiosity.  Under  the  title  of  The  Dead  Prophet 
he  published  (1885)  verses  that  express  this  feeling  by 
the  rather  ghastly  image  of  a  great  teacher  of  the 


vii.]  CONCLUSION  191 

people  "  whose  word  had  won  him  a  noble  name,"  left 
stripped  and  naked  after  his  death  before  a  staring 
crowd,  his  corpse  laid  bare  by  his  friends,  and  insulted 
by  those  whom  the  Prophet  had  offended.  This  poem 
was  written,  as  the  Memoir  tells  us,  because  Tennyson 
felt  strongly  that  the  world  likes  to  know  about  the 
"  roughness,  eccentricities,  and  defects  of  a  man  of 
genius,  rather  than  what  he  really  is."  It  is  a  very 
natural  popular  craving  to  desire  minute  knowledge  of 
everything  that  completes  a  full-length  portrait  and 
re-creates  the  living  bodily  presence  of  a  famous  man 
who  has  passed  away;  nor  would  any  man  of  his 
eminence  in  our  time  be  more  likely  to  gain  than  to 
lose  by  such  a  scrutiny  than  Tennyson.  But  in  the 
Recollections  contributed  to  the  Memoir  by  some  dis- 
tinguished men  who  were  qualified  to  speak  of  him 
by  long  friendship  and  close  personal  intercourse,  we 
have  ample  descriptions  of  his  private  life,  his  way  of 
thought,  his  conversation,  and  the  various  sides  of  his 
character.  We  know  already  what  he  really  was  ;  we 
are  aware  of  his  susceptibilities ;  and  by  respecting 
them  with  the  deference  which  they  would  command 
if  Tennyson  were  still  alive,  we  shall  best  honour  the 
memory  of  an  illustrious  Englishman  and  a  true  and 
noble  poet. 


INDEX 


Ahriman,  176. 

"  Akbar's  Dream,"  143,  176-177, 

179. 

Albert,  Prince  Consort,  76. 
Aldworth,  129,  150,  179-180. 
Allen,  Dr.,  52. 
America,  169. 
Amesbury,  107. 
"  Anacaoua,"  10. 
"  Ancient  Sage,  The,"  143-144. 
"Apostles"  at  Cambridge,  7-8, 

17. 

Argyll,  Duke  of,  95-96-,  128. 
Armageddon,  battle  of,  8. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  31-32. 
Arthur,  97-98,  100,  102,  103,  104- 

107,  110-112. 
Arthurian  Legends,  45-46, 95,  96- 

97,  100-102. 
Athenaeum,  10. 
"  Audley  Court,"  47. 
"  Auld  Robin  Gray,"  118. 
Austen,  Jane,  151. 
Auvergne,  125,  126-127. 
"  Avilion,"  112. 
"  Aylmer's  Field,"  116-117. 

B 

Bacon,  7. 

Bagenhall  (Queen  Mary"),  158. 

Balfour,  Mr.  Arthur,  14  note. 

"  Bandit's  Death,  The,"  175. 

"  Banks    and    braes    o'    bonnie 

Do  on,"  60-<">1. 
Barnes,  William,  121  note. 
Beaconsfield,  Lord,  149-150. 


Be.cket,  162-164. 

Belgium,  54. 

Beljame,  Professor  A.,  116. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  55. 

Biographia  Literaria  (Cole- 
ridge), 119. 

Blackdown,  129. 

IJlackwood's  Magazine,  15. 

Blakesley,  39. 

Blank  verse,  Tennyson's,  181-182. 

Boccaccio,  168. 

Bolton  Abbey,  33. 

Bonn,  28. 

Bonner,  Bishop  (Queen  Mary), 
158. 

Bowring,  John,  15. 

Boyle,  Mary,  6-7. 

Bradley,  Professor  A.  C.,  72  note. 

Browning,  Robert,  13, 94, 178, 179, 
180-181, 182. 

Brownings,  The,  75,  85. 

Bryce,  Mr.,  163. 

Bunyan,  64. 

"  Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,"  79. 

Bnrke,  28,  183. 

Burns,  33,  60-61,  120-121. 

Byron,  6,  27,  29,  30,  31,  34,  126, 
154,  186,  188,  189,  190. 

C 

Calvinism,  136. 

Cambridge,  4-12,  13,  17,  149. 

"  Camelot,"  102. 

Cameron,  Mrs.,  151. 

Campbell,  79. 

Carlyle,  39-40,  53,  62-63, 152, 178. 

Catullus,  61-62. 


193 


194 


TENNYSON 


Caxton,  97,  101. 
Cenci  (Shelley),  154. 
Chanson  de  Roland,  112. 
Chapters  on  English  Metre,  by 

J.  B.  Mayor,  23  note,  182. 
"Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade," 

79. 

Charlemagne,  98. 
Charles,  Mrs.  Bundle,  62. 
Chartists,  33. 
Chaucer,  61. 
Cheltenham,  52,  60. 
"  Children's  Hospital,"  133. 
"Christopher  North,"  15. 
Clark,  Sir  Andrew,  179-180. 
Clevedon, 75. 
Clough,  Arthur,  125. 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  32. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  13, 14- 

15,  29,  32,  34,  119,  123-124,  142, 

154,  188,  189,  190. 
Cologne,  28. 
"  Come  into  the  garden,  Maud," 

90. 
"Confessions     of     a    Sensitive 

Mind,"  16. 

Cornwall,  54,  60,  125. 
Couchcrs     du      Soleil      (Victor 

Hugo's),  125. 
Coventry,  33. 
Cowper,  31,  79,  187. 
Crabbe,  113,  115,  120,  174,  187. 
Cranmer  (Queen  Mary),  157, 165. 
Crimean  War,  29,  79. 
Cromwell,  62. 

"  Crossing  the  Bar,"  177, 180. 
Cup,  The,  168-169. 

D 

"Daisy,  The,"  75. 

Dante,  41,  109. 

Darwin,  Charles,  128,  188. 

"Day  Dream,  The,"  38. 

"  Dead  Prophet,  The,"  190-191. 

"  Death  of  CEnone,"  175-176, 177. 

"Defence  of  Lucknow,"  79-80. 


"  Demeter  and  Persephone,"  173- 

174. 

Derbyshire,  126. 

"Despair,"  133,  135-136,137,146. 
Disraeli  (Lord  Beaconsfield),  149- 

150. 

Dixon,  Canon,  76. 
"Dobson"   (Promise  of  May), 

167. 

"  Dora,"  46-47, 116. 
"  Doubt  and  Pride,"  184. 
"  Dream  of  Fair  Women,"  36- 

37. 

Dryden,  27. 
Duffcrin  and  Ava,  Marquis  of, 

152. 

E 

East  Anglia,  113. 

Ecclesiastes,  92. 

"  Edgar  "  (Promise  of  May),  166- 

167. 

Edith  (Harold),  161,  162. 
Edward  the  Confessor  (Harold), 

160. 

Edwin  Morris,  47. 
"Elaine,"  104. 
Eleanor,    Queen    (Becket),    163, 

164. 
Elizabeth,   Queen,  98,   156,  158, 

159. 
Emma,  Queen  of  the  Sandwich 

Islands,  128. 

"Enoch  Arden,"  113-116. 
"  Euphranor  "  (E.  FitzGerald's), 

60-61. 

Eva  (Promise  of  May),  167. 
Evolution,  128,  140,  144. 
"  Excalibur,"  111-112. 
Eyre,  Governor,  128-129. 


F 

Fairy  Queen,  97,  102. 
"Faith,"  184. 
Falcon,  The,  168. 


INDEX 


195 


Farringford,  8,3,  95, 125,  127,  150, 

151,  179. 

"  First  Quarrel,  The,"  133. 
FitzQerald,  E.,  33,  36,  38,  39,  47, 

52,  54,  60-61,  62,  63,  72,  73,  121- 

122,  147,  152-153,  178. 
Foresters,  The,  169-170. 
"Forlorn,"  175. 
Foundations  of  Belief  (A.  J.  Bal- 

four's),  14  iiote. 
France,  28,  34,  94,  126-127,  128, 

154, 188. 

Franchise  Bill,  171. 
French  Historic  Drama,  154-155. 
Fryston,  75. 

G 

"  Gardener's  Daughter,  The,"  46. 

Gardiner,  Bishop  (Queen  Mary), 
157,  158. 

"  Gareth  and  Lynette,"  153. 

Garibaldi,  127-128. 

George  Eliot,  150. 

Gil  Bias,  115. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  9.  91,  92,  149, 
150,  171,  189. 

Glastonbury,  75,  112. 

Gleaninys  of  Past  Years  (Glad- 
stone's), 91,  92. 

Globe  Theatre,  167-168. 

"  Godiva,"  33. 

Goethe,  40,  128. 

Goldsmith,  154. 

Gordon,  General,  150. 

"  Grandmother,"  63,  118,  120. 

Gray's  Elegy,  180. 

Green,  J.  R.,  162. 

"Guinevere,"  96,  103,  104-107, 
112,  150. 

H 

Hales,  Professor,  3-4. 

Hallam,  Arthur,  9,  15,  17,  29-30, 

63,  75. 

Hallam,  Henry,  39,  52,  178. 
Hamlet,  51,  74,  90. 


Hare,  Julius,  39. 

Harold,  160-162. 

Henry  II.  (Backet),  162,  163-164. 

Henry  VIII.  (Shakespeare),  152. 

High  Beech,  Epping  Forest,  33. 

"  Higher  Pantheism,"  132. 

History   of   English   Literature 

(Taine's),  1. 
Holderness,  3. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  188-189. 
"Holy  Grail,"  102-103,  121,  150. 
"  Home  they  brought  her  warrior 

dead,"  57. 
Homer,  17,  59,  103. 
Houghton,      Lord       (Monckton 

Milnes) ,  26-27,  33, 53,  75,  83-84, 

86,  188-189. 
House  of  Lords,  171. 
Howard,  Lord  ( Queen  Mary) ,  158. 
Howitt,  Mr.,  3. 

Hugo,  Victor,  125,  154,  157,  184. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  76. 
Huxley,  Professor,  68,  150. 
Hyperion  (Keats),  44. 


"  Idiot  Boy  "  (Wordsworth) ,  124. 

Idylls  of  the  King,  95-113, 125, 153. 

Iliad,  62,  112. 

"  Immeasurable  Sadness,"  Epi- 
gram, 133. 

In  Memoriam,  30,  50,  63-74,  76, 
84,  138,  142. 

Ireland,  52,  61. 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  164,  168. 

"Isabel,"  17. 

"Iseult,"  108-109. 

Isle  of  Wight,  54.  See  Farring- 
ford. 

Italy,  54,  75,  128. 

J 

Jon  son,  Ben,  72. 

Joubert,  184. 

Jowett,  Benjamin,  85-86, 93  note, 

95,  149,  179,  190. 
"  Juvenilia,"  16. 


196 


TENNYSON 


Keats,  23,  28,  38,  43-44, 136, 189. 

Kehama  (Southey's),  94. 

Kemble,  Faimy,  168. 

Kenilworth,  33. 

Khartoum,  150. 

Killarney,  61. 

Kinglake,  26. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  5.7,  60. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  179. 

Knowles,  James,  131. 

Knowles,  Sheridan,  53,  76. 


La  Fontaine,  168. 

"  Lady  of  Shalott,"  18, 27, 104, 122. 

Lake  Country,  32,  33. 

Last  Tournament,  108-109. 

"Launcelot,"  103,  104-105, 112. 

"  Launcelot  and  Elaine,"  104-105. 

"  Launcelot  and  Guinevere,"  51. 

"Leper's  Bride,"  175. 

Lewes,  G.  H.,  150. 

Liberalism,  5,  6,  28,  34. 

Lind,  Jenny,  150. 

Lisbon,  95. 

Liverpool,  Lord,  34. 

Locker,  Frederick,  129-130. 

Locker,  Miss,  152. 

"Locksley  Hall,"  48-50,  53,  116, 
133. 

"  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  Af- 
ter," 137-140,  172-173. 

London,  171,  178. 

London  Review,  27. 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  150. 

Longfellows,  The,  128. 

"  Lord  of  Burleigh,"  117. 

"  Lotos  Eaters,"  25-26. 

Louth,  3. 

"Love  thou  the  Land,"  34. 

"Lover's  Tale,"  17-18. 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  84. 

Luchon,  125. 

Lucretius,  68. 

"Lucretius"  (Tennyson's),  43. 


Lushington,  Edmund,  63-64. 
Lushingtons,  The,  39. 
Lyall,  Sir  Charles,  50  note. 
Lyceum  Theatre,  164. 
Lyrical    Ballads,   preface,   119, 
123,  124. 

M 

Mablethorpe,  28,  44-45. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  96. 

"  Madeline,"  17. 

"Maid  of  Astolat"  (Launcelot 
and  Elaine),  95, 104. 

"Maid  Marian"  (Thomas  Love 
Peacock),  170. 

Malaga,  17. 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  97,  101, 108. 

"Margaret's  Bridal  Eve" 
(George  Meredith's) ,  175. 

"Mariana  in  the  Moated 
Grange,"  19-20. 

"  Mariana  in  the  South,"  18. 

"Mark"  (The  Last  Tourna- 
ment), 108,  109. 

Martineau,  Harriet,  53. 

Marvell,  Andrew,  148. 

Mary  Boyle,  verses  to,  6-7. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots  (Queen 
Mary),  155-157. 

Mary  of  Tudor  (Queen  Mary}, 
155-157. 

Maud,  50,  73,  76,  83-94,  116,  133. 

Maurice,  Frederick,  10. 

"  May  Queen,  The,"  118-120. 

Mayor,  J.  B.,  23  note,  182. 

Memoirs  of  Lord  Tennyson,  by 
Lord  Hallam  Tennyson,  2-3, 
4,  5,  10-12,  28,  31,  32,  35,  36,  37, 
38,  39-40,  53,  57,  58,  59,  60,  61, 
63,  65-66.  72,  76-77,  83,  86,  90, 
96,  99-100, 101, 126-128, 130-131, 
150,  153,  160,  162,  163,  166,  168, 
178,  179,  189,  190. 

Meredith.  George,  175. 

Merivale,  Dean,  10. 

"Merlin  and  the  Gleam,"  185. 


INDEX 


197 


Metaphysical  Society,  The,  131, 
132. 

Mill,  J.  S.,27. 

Mill,  James,  55. 

Millais,  Sir  J.  E.,  190. 

Milton,  27,  40,  44,  91, 181. 

Mistral,  121  note. 

Moallakat  (Arabian  Poems),  49- 

50. 

"Modred,"  103,110-111. 
Monckton    Milnes.       See    Lord 

Houghton. 

Montgomery,  James,  27-28. 
Morris,  William,  Life  of,  76. 
Morte  d' Arthur   (Malory's),  97, 

108,  112. 
"  Morte  d' Arthur  "  (Tennyson's), 

24,  45-4(5, 110. 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  168. 

N 

Napoleon,  128. 
New  England,  121. 
New  York,  169. 
Newman,  John  Henry,  67,  150. 
Nineteenth  Century,  131. 
Noailles  (Queen  Mary),  157. 
Noel,  Roden,  123. 
"  Northern  Cobbler,"  122. 
"Northern     Farmer,"     121-123, 
181. 

O 

"  Ode  on  the  Death  of  the  Duke 
of  Wellington,"  77-78. 

Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality (Wordsworth),  185. 

Odi/ssf.y,  40-41,  48,  62,  115. 

"  CEnone,"  23,  24,  176. 

Omar  Khayyam,  178. 

Onomatopoeia,  92-93. 

Onnuzd,  176. 

"  Owd  Roa,"  174. 

Owen,  Professor,  128. 

Oxford,  9,  76. 

Oxford  Movement,  33,  66. 


Paget,  Lord  (Queen  Mary),  157, 

158. 
"  Palace  of  Art,"  18,  20-22,  37, 

45,  92. 
Palgrave,  F.,  130-131. 

Pantheism,  35,  132. 

Paradise  Lost,  40. 

"Paris  "  (Death  of  CEnone),  175- 

176. 

"  Passing  of  Arthur,"  110-112. 
Past  and  Present  (Carlyle's),  40. 
Pastorals,    Tennyson's,    118-124, 

133. 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  170. 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  52-53. 
"Philip  van  Artevelde"  (Sir  H. 

Taylor),  30. 
Philip  of  Spain  (Queen  Mary), 

165. 

Phillips,  Stephen,  165. 
Plato,  Jowett's,  149. 
Plays,  Tennyson's,  154-170. 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  4. 
Poems  chiefly  Lyrical,  13-17. 
Pole,    Cardinal    (Queen   Mary), 

157,  158. 
Pope,  27, 51. 

Princess,  The,  55-60,  61. 
Pritchard,  Rev.  Charles,  131. 
Promise  of  May,  166-168. 
Pyrenees,  17,  125. 

Q 

Quarterly  Review,  15,  26-27,  91. 
Queen   Mary,  154-160,  161,  162, 

163. 

R 
"Recollections  of   the    Arabian 

Nights,"  16. 

Remorse  (Coleridge's),  154. 
Renard,   Simon    (Queen    Mary), 

157. 

"  Revenge,  The,"  63,  80. 
Rhine,  28,  54. 
Richard  III.  (Shakespeare's),  163. 


198 


TENNYSON 


Richter,  Jean  Paul,  40. 
"Ring,  The, "175. 
Rizpah,  133,  134-135. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  77. 
Roland,  98,  112. 
"Romney's  Remorse,"  175. 
"Rosamond"  (Becket),  163-164. 
Rousseau,  49,  55. 
Ruskin,  John,  85,  99-100. 
Russell,  Lord  John,  76. 
Rydal  Mount,  32. 


St.  James's  Theatre,  168. 

"  St.  Simeon  Stylites,"  47,  51. 

St.  Simonists,  28. 

Schiller,  157. 

Scilly  Islands,  125. 

Scotland,  60,  121. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  13,  31,  82,  99, 

186. 

Selborne,  Lord,  179. 
Sellwood,     Emily.       See    Lady 

Tennyson. 
Sellwood,    Louisa.       See    Mrs. 

Charles  Tennyson. 
Senlac  (Harold),  160,  162. 
Shakespeare,  7,  33,  62,  73-74,  86, 

90,  122,  130,  151,  154,  158,  162, 

180 ;     Shakespeare's    Sonnets, 

73-74 ;    Shakespeare's  English 

Chronicle  Plays,  154. 
"Shallow"  (Shakespeare),  122. 
Shelley,  6,  29,  30,  31,  32,  34,  64, 

154,  188,  189,  190. 
Shiplake  Church,  75. 
Sidgwick,  Henry,  55-56. 
"  Silent  Voices,  The,"  180,  184. 
"Sir  Aylmer,"  116,117. 
"Sir  Ector"  (Morte  d' Arthur), 

112. 

"Sir  Galahad, "51. 
Somersby,  3,  17,  28,  31,  33. 
"  Song  of  the  Three  Sisters,"  10- 

11. 
Southey,  15,  29,  77-78,  94. 


Spain,  17,  95. 
Spanish  Refugees,  17. 
Spedding,  James,  39. 
Speddings,  The,  32. 
Spenser,  97,  98,  102. 
"  Spinster's  Sweet  'Arts,"  123. 
Stamford  Bridge  (Harold),  160. 
Stephen,  Sir  James  Fitzjames, 

Life  of,  7-8. 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  7-8,  131. 
Sterling,  John,  10. 
Stratford -on-Avon,  33. 
Sublime  and  Beautiful  (Burke's 

Treatise) ,  183. 
"Summer  Oak, "40. 
Sumner,  Charles,  33. 
Swinburne,  165,  181. 
Switzerland,  54-55. 
Synorix  (The  Cup),  168. 


Table  Talk  (Coleridge),  15. 

Taine,  M.,  1,  182. 

"Talking  Oak,  The,"  47-48,  94. 

Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  30-31,  76,  77, 
85. 

"  Tears,  Idle  Tears,"  57,  63. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord.  Birth 
at  Somersby,  3 ;  school  at  Louth , 
3-4 ;  taught  by  his  father,  4 ; 
Poems  by  Two  Brothers,  4; 
entered  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, 4 ;  life  at  the  University, 
4-12;  prize  poem,  Timbuctoo, 
8 ;  poems  written  at  Cambridge, 
10-12;  Poems  chiefly  Lyrical, 
13;  its  reception  by  the  critics, 
14-15 ;  journey  to  the  Pyrenees, 
17;  return  to  Somersby,  17; 
publication  of  second  volume 
of  poems,  17;  visit  to  the  Con- 
tinent, 28 ;  death  of  Arthur 
Hallam,  29-30;  Tennyson's  cor- 
respondence, 31-32 :  visit  to  the 
Lake  Country,  32;  removal 
from  Somersby  to  High  Beech, 


INDEX 


199 


Epping  Forest,  33;  to  Tun- 
bridge  Wells,  33;  publication  of 
two  volumes  of  Poetry,  38 ; 
travels  in  England  and  Ireland, 
52;  received  pension  of  £200, 
53;  visit  to  Belgium  and  Swit- 
zerland, 54-55 ;  The  Princess, 
55;  lived  at  Cheltenham,  60; 
In  Memoriam,  64 ;  marriage  at 
Shiplake,  75 ;  took  house  at 
Warninglid,  Sussex,  75;  re- 
moved to  Chapel  House,  Twick- 
enham, 75;  first  child  born  and 
died,  75;  visit  to  Italy,  75; 
Laureateship  offered  and  ac- 
cepted, 76-77, 187 ;  birth  of  son 
afterwards  Lord  Hallam  Ten- 
nyson, 83;  purchased  Farring- 
ford,  83;  Maud,  84;  Idylls  of 
the  King,  95;  short  visit  to 
Spam,  95;  Enoch  Arden,  113; 
excursion  to  Cornwall  and 
Scilly  Islands,  125 ;  visit  to  the 
Contiuent,  125 ;  tour  to  Water- 
loo, 128;  built  Aldworth  in 
Surrey,  129 ;  made  Honorary 
Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge,149  ;  offered  and  declined 
baronetcy,  149-150 ;  Queen 
Mary,  154  ;  Harold,  160  ;  Becket, 
162 ;  accepted  peerage,  171 ; 
publication  of  last  volume  of 
poems,  177;  death,  180;  per- 
sonal characteristics,  130,  190; 
religious  and  philosophical 
views,  7,  12,  28,  34-35,  64-72, 
129-149,  178,  183,  185 ;  political 
views,  5-7,  28-29,  33-34,  171, 
185-186 ;  views  on  poetry,  31 ; 
Tennyson's  pictorial  power  and 
method,  9,  17,  18-19,  20-21,  44- 
45,  118-119,  124;  his  care  in  re- 
vision, 19-20,  24,  35-38;  his 
treatment  of  nature.  21,  44,  64- 
65,  68,  109-110,  118-119,  124, 
182-183 ;  his  treatment  of  Greek 
Myths,  23-26,  44;  Tennyson  as 


a  dramatist,  154-170 ;  his  metre, 
23,  43-44, 49,  72,  93-94,  181-182; 
simplicity  of  diction,  119-121 ; 
his  management  of  dialect,  120- 
121,  122;  Tennyson  and  his 
times,  2, 182, 185-190;  his  treat- 
ment by  the  critics,  14-16,  26- 
28,  39;  his  influence  in  litera- 
ture, 186-190. 

Tennyson,  Dr.  George  Clayton 
(Tennyson's  father),  3,  4,  28. 

Tennyson,  Elizabeth  (his  moth- 
er)^. 

Tennyson,  Charles  (brother),  4, 
74. 

Tennyson, Emily  (sister),  29-30. 

Tennyson,  Cecilia  (sister),  64. 

Tennyson,  Emily,  Lady,  35,  74- 
75,  150,  155 ;  Lady  Tennyson's 
Diary,  150-152,  155. 

Tennyson,  Hallam,  Lord  (son), 
2,  83.  See  Memoirs  of  Lord 
Tennyson,  by  Lord  Hallam 
Tennyson. 

Tennyson,  Lionel  (son),  152. 

Tennyson,  Mrs.  Charles,  74. 

Tennyson,  F.,  52. 

Tennysoniana,  72-73. 

Thackeray,  61-62,  95. 

Thalaba  (Southey) ,  94. 

"The  splendour  falls  on  castle 
walls,"  57. 

"  The  Tribute,"  84-85. 

Theodore,  King  of  Abyssinia, 
128. 

Timbuctoo,  prize  poem,  8-10. 

"Tiresias,"  145-147,  174. 

Titania,  169-170. 

"Tithonus,"  23,42-43. 

Torrigo,  17. 

Tourgueneff,  150. 

Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  4, 
149. 

"Tristram  and  Iseult,"  108-110. 

Tunbridge  Wells,  33. 

Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  59. 

Twickenham.  75,  83. 


200 


TENNYSON 


"  Two  Voices,"  30,  50-61. 
Tyndall,  Professor,  86. 

U 

"  Ulysses,"  23,  24,  40-42,  47,  53, 

95. 
"  Underwood  "  (Ben  Jonson),  72. 


"  Vastness,"  140,  141,  146, 174. 
Vere,  Aubrey  de,  32-33,  39. 
Victoria,  Queen,  76-77,  98,  171, 

177,  186. 
Vienna,  30,  63. 
"Village  Life,"  122. 
"  Vision  of  Sin,"  40. 

W 

Wales,  North,  33. 
"  Walking  to  the  Mail,"  47. 
Warninglid,  Sussex,  75. 
Waterloo,  128. 


Watson,  William,  179. 
Watts,  G.,  190. 
Weimar,  128. 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  77. 
Westminster  Abbey,  180. 
Westminster  Review,  15. 
White,  Sir  Thomas ( Queen  Mary), 

157. 
William  the  Conqueror  (Harold), 

160, 162. 

William  the  Silent,  155. 
Wilson,  Professor,  15. 
Woodbridge,  152. 
Wordsworth,  Charles,  9. 
Wordsworth,  William,  13, 15,  18- 

19,  29,  32-33,  39,  46-47,  67-68, 

71,  76,  77,  78,  119-120,  123-124, 

185,  188,  189. 
"Wreck,  The,"  133. 
Wulfnoth  (Harold) ,  160-161. 
Wyatt,     Sir     Thomas     (Queen 

Mary),  157, 158,  159-160. 


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